


The Best And Wisest Adaptation I Have Ever Known: The Granada Holmes Rewatch

by PlaidAdder



Category: Granada Holmes - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: David Burke, Edward Hardwicke, Episode Review, M/M, Meta, Nonfiction, jeremy brett - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-19 19:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 71,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11904183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: This is a complete collection of episode reviews for the Sherlock Holmes series filmed and broadcast between 1984 and 1995 by Granada Television (now ITV Granada) starring Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and David Burke & Edward Hardwicke as Dr. Watson. I re/watched the whole series in the summer of 2017, because the entire world was on fire and I needed a diversion. I have been reading Holmes and Watson as a couple for at least 30 years now, so that perspective informs all of these reviews. There are occasional comparisons to what happened withSherlock.Also, I usually discuss the canon story on which any given episode was based. As with all the other rewatches posted here, I am critical, but always from a place of love.All of these reviews were first posted to tumblr and will be cross-posted more or less intact. There may have to be slight adjustments made depending on whether AO3 treats the GIFs properly. Enjoy them again, or for the first time!





	1. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

  


Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce THE GRANADA HOLMES REWATCH!

Some benevolent soul has digitized all of the Granada  _Sherlock Holmes_  series from the 1980s, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and David Burke/Edward Hardwicke as Watson, and [some other benevolent soul put up a master post with links to all the episodes on line.](http://cupidford.tumblr.com/post/143371896070/i-got-a-request-for-some-granada-holmes-links-but) This is exactly what I need at this juncture in my life. My president is a lunatic, my country is in chaos, the planet is frying, and Granada Holmes is going to get me through it all. In addition to its many beauties, Granada Holmes takes me back to my adolescence, a time which was very troubled for me when I was living through it, but which in retrospect seems like paradise. Jeremy Brett was my first TV Holmes. I love  _Sherlock_ ; but Brett will always be Holmes in my heart. Brett and Burke were the team that inspired my first ever Holmes/Watson fanfic, “[Absurdly Simple](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F742602&t=YzdiOTcxYzYyNTYzMmY5ZjYxMGNiY2ZiOTJiY2VlOThkYjljMmFiNyxDUHU1RDV1WQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F158931888829%2Fgranada-holmes-rewatch-a-scandal-in-bohemia&m=1),” back in the 1990s. To see them on screen again makes me feel genuinely happy, regardless of all the crap going on right now. 

And yet, I never finished the series. The change in Watsons was too much for me; I stopped following it after “The Final Problem.” This time, I mean to see the thing through. So some of these episodes are old friends, and some will be, to me, brand new.

I will occasionally be referencing  _Sherlock,_ because this series was obviously an influence on that show; but these posts should still be enjoyable and accessible to people with no knowledge of  _Sherlock_.  And now, let me favor you with my thoughts upon re-viewing the episode that introduced Jeremy Brett’s Holmes and David Burke’s Watson to a soon-to-be adoring public: “A Scandal In Bohemia.”

The big news with Granada Holmes was that they were supposed to be doing adaptations of the actual Conan Doyle stories, instead of taking the characters of Holmes and Watson and writing new plots for them. That’s what most theatrical, film, and TV adaptations had done up to that point. With the exception of  _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , which was turned into quite a number of film adaptations, people mostly weren’t interested in dramatizing Doyle’s actual stories. It’s easy enough to see why; the short stories are often so compressed that it’s hard to see how you’d get a full-length film or even an hour-long episode out of them, the plotting is often sort of shoddy, and the preoccupations of late Victorians didn’t necessarily match up with those of twentieth-century viewers. 

In fact, the Granada team often had trouble getting an hour’s worth of TV out of a single story without padding it or introducing laughably extraneous “action” sequences like the train chase at the end of “Greek Interpreter” (more on that in its own good time). But the better scripts were able to seize Doyle’s missed opportunities and add nuance and development that Doyle didn’t have the time for. “A Scandal in Bohemia,” since it’s the introductory episode, has plenty of work to do, so it keeps the pace up pretty well. Even better, it invests most of the extra time in character development, which is the real strength of the Granada project. Granada’s production values were pretty good (at the time) for heritage TV–but they don’t stand up that well in the twenty-first century. There is also some unevenness in the acting. Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson are all fantastic all the time. The guest stars are a mixed bag. Wolf Kahler–charitably described on IMDB as “a German-born character actor–is underwhelming as the King of Bohemia, and although Gayle Hunnicutt is lovely as Irene Adler, she’s not really as good as the part they wrote for her. 

And this brings me to the two things I appreciate most, on rewatch, about “A Scandal In Bohemia.” One is the work everyone’s done to build the foundation for Holmes and Watson’s relationship, which is just delicious; and the other is that this is really the only adaptation I’ve seen that does justice to the canon Irene Adler instead of essentially rewriting her with whatever the adapter thinks is a modern “strong woman” (Moffat, I’m lookin’ at you). 

What this adaptation gets, and what most others don’t, is that although Irene Adler is Holmes’s adversary in this story, she is not the criminal or the villain. That role is owned by Holmes’s client. The King of Bohemia had an affair with an unattached and unprotected American woman, dumped her, and is now so terrified of having to suffer the consequences of his own behavior that he is willing to do just about anything to get the incriminating photograph off Irene Adler. The Granada episode begins with two of the King’s hired goons ransacking Irene Adler’s house in the dead of night, ripping open her furniture and paintings with knives as they search for the photograph. This is only one of the many completely illegal things the King admits to doing to Irene Adler during his interview with Holmes (in ACD canon and in this adaptation). She eventually appears to chase the burglars off with a pistol. After they’ve fled, she looks up at the large oil painting of herself (it’s a terrible painting; I don’t know why the producers of period drama can’t bring themselves to pay for decent fake oil portraits, but they’re universally disappointing) and you can see how hurt and shocked she is by the symbolic violence. And that’s the canon Irene Adler: a strong woman in an extremely vulnerable position. She’s cunning, bold, clever, pistol-packing, trouser-wearing etc.,  _in self-defense_. It’s established in the King’s first interview that Irene Adler is not really a blackmailer in the ordinary sense of the word; the King has tried to buy the photograph but she won’t sell it. What she wants is for him to marry her and not someone else. As soon as she doesn’t want that any more, she’s done. In this adaptation, they underline that by showing her tossing The Photograph from the deck of the ship in which she and Godfrey are sailing for the Continent, like Rose throwing away the Heart of the Ocean.

This is important, because it explains Holmes’s growing admiration for Irene Adler as something other than a sexual attraction. Holmes does comment on her beauty, but when an evidently surprised Watson repeats, “A face a man might die for?!” he dismisses it as “a metaphor.” For him, her beauty is not superficial; it’s the outward sign of more intangible qualities. There’s a moment early on when Holmes, disguised as an alcoholic and unemployed groom, is watching Irene Adler’s house and hears her singing. Irene Adler is identified in canon as a contralto. They actually found a contralto to do the singing. Her voice is beautiful, strong, and lower than you would expect; and Holmes is immediately taken by it. When the still-disguised Holmes finds himself drawn into the secret wedding, and she calls him over afterward to give him a sovereign, he is genuinely touched by her generosity–not just in giving him the coin, but in protecting his dignity by calling it a “souvenir.” During the “fire” scene, Holmes (as the poor old parson) has a conversation with Irene Adler about motives in which she rather pointedly tells him that she “cannot imagine” being motivated by a desire for revenge, and he obviously believes her. By the end of the episode, when Holmes says that Irene Adler is “on a very different level to your Majesty,” he doesn’t just mean that she’s smarter; he means that in basically every way she is a  _better person_. She’s compassionate and gracious to those ‘below’ her in the social hierarchy; he’s contemptuous and abusive. She’s motivated by love; he’s motivated by self-interest. She appreciates music and art; he apparently only appreciates money, power, and sex. She’s capable of being magnanimous to a defeated adversary; everything we know about the King suggests that he likes to grind his own adversaries into the dirt. 

So given all this…why is Holmes working for this dirtbag?

Watching this adaptation again, I was struck by how much this story sort of predicts the hardboiled detective phenomenon. Holmes doesn’t take this case because he thinks it’s the right thing to do; he takes it because he needs the work. The need is partly financial–”There’s money in this case, Watson, if there’s nothing else,” he says, as he watches the King’s horses and carriage pull up–and partly psychological. The adapters have transplanted to the beginning of this episode a chunk of the opening of  _The Sign of Four_  in which Watson takes Holmes to task over his drug use; so before the King shows up we get the “my mind rebels at stagnation” speech. Holmes is pretty explicit about the fact that taking this case is part of his treatment plan.

Holmes is never for a moment under the illusion that he’s on the side of the angels in this case. He is engaged in the cynical exercise of helping someone with a lot of power and money cover his ass, at the expense of a woman armed only with her wit and charm. One of tne of the most enjoyable things about Brett’s performance in this episode is how consistently he telegraphs Holmes’s contempt for his own client. The consultation scene is fantastic in that regard. Watson, once he finds out that the client is a King, starts trying to do all the royalty protocols; Holmes pointedly doesn’t give a shit. The King wants to wear a mask and call himself the Count von Kramm; Holmes addresses him as “your Majesty.” The King doesn’t want Watson there; Holmes tells him “it is both or none.” He mentions that the King has “killed four opponents” in duels; the King says “All of them honorably;” Holmes just laughs. I particularly love the moment when Holmes is running through all the reasons why this isn’t really a problem, and the King is responding to them. At first Holmes is dismissive; then, as he starts to realize the King hasn’t told him everything, you see Brett leaning forward with the gleam in his eye, gesturing impatiently at him,  _come on, come on, out with it._ Holmes asks the King for money up front, something he hardly ever does–partly to get the money, of course, but also to send the King a message: please do not allow yourself to believe even for a moment that I’m taking this case for any other reason. Certainly not because I’m honored to be consulted by a guy with a title; and definitely not because I give a damn about  _you._ When they part company at Irene Adler’s house, the King offers Holmes his hand to shake. No doubt for the King this is a great moment of magnanimous condescension. Holmes turns and walks away from it; Watson shakes it.

And this brings us to Holmes and Watson.

What can I say? This is the shit, right here. This is the H/W relationship against which all others eventually pale in comparison. Watson’s voiceover announces that the Granada team has decided to change the overall story arc, and Priority #1 was eliminating Watson’s marriage. Watson says that at the time of the case, he and Holmes had been living together for “some years.” He also says that every time he leaves Holmes for “any length of time,” he comes back dreading Holmes’s “moods.” As soon as he gets inside, he starts asking Mrs. Hudson about how Holmes is doing, and it doesn’t sound great. He goes up expecting the worse, sees the syringe in a half-opened drawer, gets righteously pissed off, and decides to just start right in: “Which is it tonight? Morphine or cocaine?”

What I love about this is how quickly both of these actors establish the depth of the relationship. Watson’s reaction to the sight of the syringe is so intense and so immediate that you know this has been source of conflict for them for a long time. Holmes reacts in what he knows will be a maddeningly understated way. As the conversation develops, we realize that there are other layers to this. Watson is angry partly because he’s coming home from a long trip and instead of getting to just settle in and enjoy being warm and dry and cozy, they have to have THIS argument again. The running gag started in this episode about Watson’s appetite–he’s always hungry, and Holmes never is, and it seems like at all times Watson is devoting significant bandwidth to ensuring his own access to food–stands in for a more poignant disappointment: coming home to Holmes is never as comforting as Watson wants it to be. There are always the “moods” to deal with–moods which, it appears, are partly Holmes’s way of getting back at Watson for leaving him in the first place. Holmes even implies, at the end of this confrontation, that he left the syringe visible on purpose: “You my close that drawer. You have made the wrong diagnosis, Doctor! This is my stimulant.” And he hands him the King of Bohemia’s letter. 

At some point during all this, Holmes indicates a box of cigars, and says, “you see, I was not unmindful of your return.” The way Brett does that, melancholy with just a touch of petulance, just says so much. He knows Watson wants something from him he’s not providing; he’s pained at being unable to provide it; he provides instead what he can, which is the box of cigars and the chance of another adventure. And at least for right now, it’s enough. Look at Watson’s face in that image up top. Holmes has just told him that he’s going to need Watson’s help for this dangerous mission; and Watson literally sits up straighter in his chair, all eagerness and attention. He’s so proud that Holmes wants him. After reading the King’s letter, Watson says, rather sadly, that the client clearly won’t want him around and he should go, and Holmes tells him, very clearly: no. I need you. Stay. Well, actually, what he says is, “I am lost without my Boswell.” They give you a nice closeup on Brett’s face as he says it, and it just makes your heart go AAAAAAH!!!

So this is what keeps the Granada Holmes first in my heart. In about 15 minutes they establish a long-term relationship with many emotional layers and all kinds of intimacy between the two of them, and everything else is really just gravy. Now I will warn anyone who hasn’t seen these before that you will occasionally get a mood-breaking bad surprise from the production values. For instance, someone in the costume department was having a bad day when they got the order for the King’s outfit:

Honestly he looks like he is on the way to a Victorian-themed BDSM party. Even worse, the director decided to do a whole Blindfold Motif thing:

This is the blindfolded orchestra playing while the King and Irene dance; and then there’s this:

Honestly, I can’t tell whether this is supposed to be a fic prompt, or…well, no, I know that it’s supposed to symbolize Holmes’s love for disguise, which is certainly indulged in this episode. There are several scenes of Holmes taking off his diguises and washing his face and hands in a basin while talking to Watson. The production team obviously loved the “master of disguise” thing and Brett really threw himself into it. His Holmes really is an actor, and a rare one. And if you want to imagine what he did with that mask after the King went home, don’t let me stop you.


	2. The End of Stupid Watson: THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This episode hammers some nails in the coffins of the two biggest adaptation cliches that the Granada people were trying to kill: Unemotional Holmes and Stupid Watson.

Continuing the Granada Holmes rewatch, we move to one of my favorites: “The Dancing Men.” This is one of the classic Holmes stories, and the best one about Holmes as code-breaker. It presents some challenges to the would-be adapter, because so much of the story is about Holmes solving the code, and it’s very difficult to dramatize that. But Anthony Skene, who wrote the teleplay, was an experienced hand at the mystery adaptation, and he does two really smart things here, one of which would have a major impact on adaptations to come. One, he spends a lot of time fleshing out the tragic story of Hilton Cubitt and his wife Elsie, showing her panic and deterioration and his (always almost-repressed, of course) emotional turmoil as the screw turns and the situation goes from bad to worse. Two, he turns this into a story about Holmes and Watson teaching each other. This hammers some nails in the coffins of the two biggest adaptation cliches that the Granada people were trying to kill: Unemotional Holmes and Stupid Watson. 

The image you see above is from the end of the episode, while they’re waiting for the notorious Abe Slaney to ride over from Eldridge’s farm in answer to the coded message Holmes just sent him. Inspector Martin has asked Holmes how he figured this out. Watson jumps in and starts explaining. As he goes on telling the story of how they deciphered the messages, the camera closes in and you can see Holmes doing his best not to laugh. He’s smoking, and smiling, and graciously not calling attention to the fact that Watson has learned everything he now knows about codes from a monograph Holmes wrote on the subject. Early in the investigation, Holmes asks him whether he’s read this monograph, and Watson says, “Some of it…I found it rather heavy going.” Later on, as their flat starts filling up with chalkboards and dancing figures, Watson sits down with a paper and surreptitiously slips the code monograph behind it, studying up on the sly. When Watson asks what “ABESLANE” means, instead of telling him, Holmes says, “Watson, if this is ‘E’…”:

“…flag denotes the end of the words.” And he leaves Watson to figure it out.

In other words, though by and large Watson doesn’t realize it, Holmes is training Watson. He’s involving Watson not just as his Boswell, but as his detective apprentice. And this is kind of huge. We’ve all always known Watson was the action guy– “Scandal in Bohemia” established that–but here, Skene departs from the story as written to show us Holmes teaching Watson how to solve the puzzle–and Watson eventually learning it. 

All of this is set up in the opening scene, which contains the famous “you do not propose to invest in South African securities” deductive riff. What I love about this is how playful they both are. Holmes is showing off a bit, but he’s not trying to score off Watson; he’s just enjoying his little demonstration, and perhaps enjoying even more the fact that Watson reacts exactly as he initially predicted. But Watson’s got game of his own:

**WATSON: Holmes, why are you so cheerful? You’re unemployed, you have no case to solve…now normally, that produces Black Moods, and the infernal lethargy of the cocaine-bottle.**

**HOLMES: You have not used the logical methods which I constantly expound.**

**WATSON: Sherlock Holmes is cheerful…so Sherlock Holmes must have a case!**

Later, when he describes Cubitt’s appearance to Holmes, Holmes says, “Oh now you can’t possibly know that.”  “Really, Holmes?” says Watson, as the doorbell rings, and Holmes realizes Watson’s just seen Cubitt through the window, getting out of his cab. That little smile and head tilt Burke does as the bell rings and the penny drops is just a perfect drop of pure distilled acting joy. You’ve got your methods, Holmes…and I’ve got mine. And while Holmes is teaching Watson how you solve a cryptogram, Watson’s low-key teaching Holmes some client relations skills. Watson realizes immediately that Cubitt could use some emotional support, and finds many little ways to provide it. There are also several moments at which Watson coaches Holmes about his own reactions. Holmes at first shakes these off–”He doesn’t come to me for sympathy”–but eventually learns to appreciate them (as when, at Watson’s prompting, he asks the poor distraught cook if she would like to sit down during the interview). 

So while Skene un-stupids Watson, Brett works on expanding Holmes’s emotional range–and he’s fantastic at it. His Holmes is crackling with energy all the time, even when he’s not moving. In fact, one of the most delightful things about Brett’s physicality in this role is the way his body goes from zero to sixty at the drop of a hat. I particularly enjoy watching him snap out of his reverie to rush into a feverish tidying of the sitting room before the client shows up. But he’s also always quivering with more subtle energies. I’m not kidding when I tell you that I spent some of this episode thinking about how much I love watching Jeremy Brett handle paper. 

The stories make a big deal about Holmes’s sensitive hands, and Brett obviously took that as a character note. He really had the gift of bringing the props alive, and watching this now, I felt a kind of painful nostalgia for the tactile world that the information revolution swept aside–the notes, the envelopes, the scraps of paper, the blackboards and the chalks, the pins, the leatherbound books with their dog-eared pages. Maybe I miss it more because of all the time I’ve spent in the nearly-paperless  _Sherlock_  universe, where the text has dematerialized. 

“Dancing Men” offers opportunities for more complex emotions because of the tragic outcome. The emotional arc that Moffat and Gatiss spent four seasons drawing out more or less happens in this one episode; Holmes goes from telling Cubitt to shut up about his true love already and “get to the point” to growing anxiety about the danger menacing his client to feeling real shock and grief when he hears about the shooting. My favorite moment of this episode has always been the bit where they get the last message from Cubitt, and Holmes pins it up and starts translating it on the board, which is set up so the viewer can’t see what he’s writing. He says the first few words out loud, then just keeps writing. He and Watson watch the letters take shape with growing dismay. They stare at it for a moment, then look at each other, and then they both just ZOOM–with Holmes snatching up all the paper messages on his way out. You know, this is not flashy, it’s not technically complicated, it’s not rocket science. It’s a tad hokey when they show you the now-deserted chalkboard reading “ELSIE -RE-ARE TO MEET THY GO-.” But it WORKS.

This episode, by the way, is helped enormously by the actors playing Hilton and Elsie, who are able to raise the stakes by making you believe in their love and their tragedy. (Betsy Brantley, who plays Elsie, later played the kid’s mother in  _The Princess Bride_ , IMDB informs me.) It is not helped at all by the guy playing Abe Slaney, who’s just terrible. But he’s only in one scene.

And so I love the ending of this episode, with Watson eagerly showing off his new decoding skills, Martin listening attentively, and Holmes being snarky to himself and yet also proud of how well his protege is doing with the explanation. But the best moment is after Martin’s gone and Watson asks Holmes what he put in his note to Abe Slaney. “Read it yourself,” Holmes says, and tosses the note to him. Watson looks at it, parses the words sort of slowly, and then just looks up and says, with that smile again, “Come here at once.” Holmes smiles back. “How absurdly simple.” And sadly, they cut away just before they leap into each other’s arms. Well, all right, I don’t KNOW that. But I do know that from start to finish, this has been about showing us that Watson has the intellectual capacity to become a real partner to Holmes–in the business sense, of course. And that was, at the time, a major change in his characterization; and you can see the consequences in any modern adaptation you look at.   


	3. Are You All Right?: THE ADVENTURE OF THE NAVAL TREATY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeremy Paul’s adaptation of “Naval Treaty” doesn’t do a great job of making sense of Holmes’s behavior; if anything, it gets weirder. After the first trip to Woking, as he’s headed off to bed, Watson says, “Are you all right?” A lot of things about Holmes seem to be off in this one, and it’s hard to know whether that was the result of intention or of the lack of it. But the theory does occur to me–and it’s probably occurred to others before me–that maybe, in fact, the point here is that Holmes is not, in fact, all right. And that this may have to do with the fact that this is, AFAIK, the only case in the canon that involves someone from Watson’s past.

Apart from starting with “Scandal in Bohemia” and ending with “The Final Problem,” there doesn’t seem to have been any attempt on Hawkesworth’s part to account for publication order. “The Naval Treaty” was the last story Doyle published in the Strand before “The Final Problem.” Maybe that explains the unusual number of WTF moments that Holmes has. The most famous his the one where, in the middle of interviewing Percy Phelps and Annie Harrison, Holmes goes off on a disquisition about the beauty of roses, apropos of nothing. But there are other things about Holmes’s behavior in “Naval Treaty” that are just weird, including the fact that he decides it would be a great idea to come up with an extra-dramatic way of springing the recovered treaty on his client–knowing full well that his client responded to the LAST major shock he received by collapsing for nine weeks with a life-threatening attack of ‘brain fever.’

Well, Jeremy Paul’s adaptation of “Naval Treaty” doesn’t do a great job of making sense of Holmes’s behavior; if anything, it gets weirder. After the first trip to Woking, as he’s headed off to bed, Watson says, “Are you all right?” A lot of things about Holmes seem to be off in this one, and it’s hard to know whether that was the result of intention or of the lack of it. But the theory does occur to me–and it’s probably occurred to others before me–that maybe, in fact, the point here is that Holmes is not, in fact, all right. And that this may have to do with the fact that this is, AFAIK, the only case in the canon that involves someone from  _Watson_ ’s past.

First of all, I think Paul may just not have received the memo about Watson’s marriage not taking place in this universe. The first line of Doyle’s story is, “The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes, and of studying his methods.” Maybe that’s why their first scene together seems to assume that Watson is visiting Holmes instead of living with him (the detritus in the sitting room seems to come as a shock to him, and the implication seems to be that without Watson, Holmes has let himself go). Watson is eager to get Holmes to pay some attention to him, and Holmes is anxious about whether Watson really still wants to come along on the adventure with him. From the snarking Holmes does about Watson’s “legitimate work” you’d think he was jealous of Watson’s practice. And maybe he is. 

Maybe he’s also jealous of Percy. I say this, not just because I ship the ship (though I do), but because a lot of Holmes’s stranger behavior seems to happen around Percy. When it’s just the two of them investigating, everything seems to click, and there are some wonderful moments–like the scene in Phelps’s office with Inspector Forbes. He comes in bitching about how Holmes uses their information and take the credit; Holmes goes off on him; and when a chastened Forbes asks them where they’re going next, Watson REALLY enjoys telling him they’re going to see Lord Holdhurst. But while they’re interviewing Percy and Annie, and Watson keeps trying to help out by pointing things out on the map, Holmes barely acknowledges him, and seems to be getting more and more irritated. That night, back in 221B, when Watson asks Holmes if he’s all right, Holmes brushes it off. But when Watson gets up to go, Holmes gets positively plaintive: “I won’t detain you any longer from your *legitimate* work,” he says, but he hopes Watson will come to Woking with him the next morning. Watson’s hugely pleased to get the invite, and walks out calling, “Good night, Holmes.” Holmes sits there as the door closes, brooding. And at the end, when Percy offers Holmes his hand, Holmes avoids shaking it by handing Percy his cane instead:

So what is all this about? Well, I have a theory.

Going into this, Brett has to have known that the “what a lovely thing a rose is” speech was going to be hard to motivate. In the story, it really comes out of nowhere, and goes nowhere. Now I can tell you exactly what happened: Doyle temporarily hijacked Holmes’s voice–the voice of authority, and the only one of Doyle’s voices that people really listened to–to defend something he himself really cared about, viz., the existence of God. (In another obvious soapbox moment, on their way back to London, Holmes gratuitously points out some industrial schools being built as “lighthouses” of the future.) Here’s what Doyle wrote:

**‘…What a lovely thing a rose is!’**

**He walked past the couch to the open window, and held up the drooping stalk of a moss rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.**

**‘There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,’ said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. 'It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.’**

The Victorian crisis over the theory of evolution actually pre-dates Darwin; by 1893 people had come up with some strategies for reconciling it with the existence of God, and this is one of them: there must be a divine creator superintending the process, or we wouldn’t get these beautiful things like roses that have no apparent utilitarian purpose. Now, to call this a  _scientific_  argument is bullshit, for many reasons. One: it assumes that beauty is an absolute given that all humans instinctively recognize. Two: it ignores the fact that flowers are in fact necessary for our existence, because without them we wouldn’t have pollination and therefore most of our food. Three: it’d be harder to find a flower whose scent and appearance owed more to human engineering than the rose. Doyle specifies a [moss rose](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.davidaustinroses.com%2Fus%2Froses-by-type%2Fold-roses%2Fmoss-roses&t=ODU2MWFjNzVlMzhlM2U5NDEyNWJlNzk4NzcwY2YxYTI5M2U3NWUzOSxSQm53UkdZcQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159063668369%2Fare-you-all-right-granada-holmes-the-naval&m=1), a variety created by a genetic mutation which was then carefully selected for by human growers. What this  _really_  is is a smackdown of Victorian materialism and a defense of intangible things like beauty, which both hard-line industrial capitalists and liberal reformers would dismiss as “extra”–because they don’t have a monetary value and don’t satisfy a bodily need. On that level, I can certainly appreciate this speech; but it has to be said that it’s out of character and a propos of nothing. Paul cuts out the heart of this passage–everything from “All other things” to “an embellishment of life, not a condition of it”–and leaves us with pretty much pure sentiment, which exacerbates both problems. 

It seems to me, from the context the adaptation gives it, that this speech becomes less about providence than about love. Because one thing Holmes has definitely noticed is that Percy gets a lot of love, and that it’s expressed through touch. The first thing Watson does when he walks in is go over to Percy and take his hand in both of his own. When Percy gets overexcited and has an attack, Annie and Watson work together to get him his medicine, and the camera focuses on Watson’s hands as he supports Percy’s head and administers the dose. Right before Holmes goes to his mark for what’s eventually going to be the start of the rose speech, there’s a reaction shot of him watching Percy holding Annie’s hand and kissing it in gratitude. And then he goes over and–uncharacteristically, Doyle tells us–starts handling a rose.

I am over-reading, perhaps; but it appears to me that Holmes has had some kind of unexpected response to witnessing all this and is trying to understand what it means. He’s always considered love an “extra,” something he didn’t need and didn’t want; now suddenly the extras look to him like proof of the goodness of life. Maybe that’s why his parting message to Watson that night is so plaintive. And maybe the touch is one of the things that’s puzzling him. His snub of the king of Bohemia is obviously personal. But it seems to me like he’s trying to negotiate his way out of Percy’s handshake partly because he just doesn’t like casual touching. Maybe he’s reconsidering the role touch might one day play in his life.

Anyway, I admit I could be making all of this up, so on to other topics. Annie Harrison is one of the many remarkable women of canon in whom Moffat and Gatiss took no interest whatsoever; Holmes tells Percy straight up that without her they wouldn’t have recovered the treaty. The guest stars are all pretty good, and the shots of everyone outside in the summer sunlight are beautiful (thank you costume department for getting them out of their heavy tweeds for once). The final sequence showing Holmes’s fight with Joseph Harrison in slow-motion silhouette is…well…I’m sorry, it’s awful. It seems to me like a deliberate attempt to avoid having to actually film a combat scene, perhaps because neither actor was comfortable with one. Some effort was put into the teaser sequence, with a nice artistic shot of a marble bust that probably inspired some of the motifs in “The Six Thatchers.” So, overall not my favorite, but we move on.


	4. Men Behaving Remarkably Badly: THE ADVENTURE OF THE SOLITARY CYCLIST

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes’s dressing-down of Watson after his first (in this series anyway) solo assignment is a classic moment, in ACD canon and in this adaptation. But Holmes also clearly has a few things to learn. In fact, all the men drawn into Violet Smith’s orbit seem to have a habit of bungling things at critical moments. And yet, despite all this masculine incompetence, Violet Smith is still in real danger, because that’s what life is like when you’re a single woman trying to support yourself and your widowed mother in a world where men are pretty much never held accountable for the way they treat women.

  


I have done no research on the making of this series, so I don’t know what was in the guidelines for the writers. All four of these episodes so far have been written by different people, all men who were veterans of TV adaptation and had worked in serial television before. However it happened, “Solitary Cyclist” would have been a better follow-up epsiode to “Dancing Men” than “Naval Treaty” was, because it continues the narrative of Watson’s apprenticeship–which, in this story, hits a couple speed bumps. Holmes’s dressing-down of Watson after his first (in this series anyway) solo assignment is a classic moment, in ACD canon and in this adaptation. But Holmes also clearly has a few things to learn. In fact, all the men drawn into Violet Smith’s orbit seem to have a habit of bungling things at critical moments. And yet, despite all this masculine incompetence, Violet Smith is still in real danger, because that’s what life is like when you’re a single woman trying to support yourself and your widowed mother in a world where men are pretty much never held accountable for the way they treat women.

All this is to say that I’m going to be discussing sexual violence below the cut tag, because it’s pretty clear that that’s one of the things really menacing Violet Smith in this story, even though Doyle never explicitly states that. 

“Solitary Cyclist” is one of several Holmes stories in which the client is a young, unattached woman who is menaced by male predators scheming to get control of her money. All of these plots are based on the assumption that it’s damn near impossible for a woman in England to achieve financial independence. In England, until the Women’s Property Act was passed in 1882, married women owned nothing; all their assets became the property of the husband as soon as they married. Doyle’s plots still assume that a woman’s income and property belong first to her male relatives and then to her husband. Roylott in “Speckled Band,” Windicott in “A Case of Identity,” and Rucastle in “Copper Beeches” are all trying to prevent their stepdaughters from marrying because that will mean losing the stepdaughters’ income to their new husbands. “Solitary Cyclist” is unusual in approaching this plot from the other angle, with the villains scheming to force the victim into marriage. 

Holmes confidently assures Williamson and Woodley that “a forced marriage is no marriage, but a very serious felony;” but Holmes fans have been skeptical of this assertion from way back. At least as late as the eighteenth century, the mere fact that the woman had not consented to the marriage was not enough to invalidate it under English law. From the fact that forced marriage was only criminalized in the UK in 2014, it would appear that Holmes’s confidence was misplaced. In any case, historically, the most effective way for the perpetrator of a forced marriage to prevent the victim from challenging it legally was to rape her afterward, which ruined her ‘value’ in the marriage market and thereby made her family less likely to fight to get her back. This is clearly what Carruthers fears Woodley is planning to do to Violet; but due to Victorian sensibilities and no doubt the  _Strand_ ’s standards and practices, he refers to this possibility as “the worst fate that can befall a woman.” That’s also one of the things Carruthers obviously thinks he’s protecting Violet from by following her on her rides back and forth to the train station. Like a lot of male attempts to “protect” women, however, this is really just endangerment in disguise; in order to keep her near him, he keeps her vulnerable to Woodley. As the solitary cyclist–or, as we would put it, stalker–he becomes an embodiment of the danger he tells himself he’s protecting her from. Which shows you how messed up patriarchal logic is; but at least it means that Violet finally has something concrete she can ask Holmes to investigate, apart from her vague intuitions that something about this situation is pretty fucked up.

Anyway. For the Holmes/Watson relationship, this episode creates is a kind of typical development-of-the-partnership narrative, in which each gets frustrated and pissed off with the other, but in the end each realizes he needs the other, and they come together in the end to defeat the baddies. When Violet first shows up, Holmes is still in mentor mode, and he’s genuinely pleased that Watson figures out how Holmes deduced her bicycling habits. This apparently gives Holmes the idea that Watson’s ready to do some independent work; but the results are famously disappointing for everyone. The sequence in which Holmes explains to Watson all the ways in which he was Doing It Wrong is one of my favorite parts of the series. The best part of it is how cool Holmes manages to stay while sticking all of his little barbs into Watson, and how Watson totally fails to stay cool while the barbs are being stuck into him. Great understated snark from Brett, great slow burn from Burke; it starts to feel actually a lot like Cumberbatch and Freeman’s chemistry on  _Sherlock,_ circa “The Great Game.” Holmes makes a big deal about Watson’s decision to consult the house agents for information instead of going down to the local pub and getting all the dirt; Watson snarks back at him about it after Holmes decides to go down there and do it right.

What happens when Holmes follows his own advice down in Farnham is classic:

[Originally posted by tremendousdetectivetheorist](https://tmblr.co/Z7gvaf2JO1IJj)

Now, everyone loves this scene, and so do I. Woodley is such an asshole, and Holmes lays such a beatdown on him (physically and rhetorically), and the boxing part of it is credible enough to make it exciting. Woodley goes into it clearly thinking he’s going to make hash out of this pencil-necked geek, and it’s just so satisfying to watch training beat brute strength. “A gentleman uses the straight LEFT!” must be up there in the history of the great punch lines of British TV (har har). Even better is Holmes’s glowing self-satisfaction as he describes his triumph to Watson, who’s patching him up:

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs1oQ_w72)

If you think about it from the point of view of the investigation, though, what happens is that Holmes blows his own cover after being on the job for all of five minutes. He’s evidently too involved in getting the dirt from the bartender to pay attention to his surroundings, and doesn’t realize one of the subjects he’s investigating is actually in the pub with him, listening to him ask questions about him. Holmes can’t go back to that pub now, and he’s never going to get any more information about the situation or the people involved than he already has. The only new piece of information he’s discovered is that Woodley is staying with Williamson at Charlington Hall on the weekends. He still doesn’t know who the cyclist is–or at least he doesn’t know any more than he did before he went down there–and he’s not in a position where he can take action to protect Violet. In other words, as much as he enjoyed pasting Woodley, as a detective, Holmes has also done remarkably badly.

So on their final trip to Farnham, Holmes has kind of already put himself in the detective doghouse; and then he finds out he’s miscalculated the timing. At that point, he and Watson are basically at the same level, effectiveness-wise; and from here on in they’re relying on each other. The other great moment in this episode is when Holmes tells Watson to go stop a spooked and runaway horse, and Watson just goes out and does it, while Holmes watches him go and says, “Good man!” Watson and Holmes sort of take turns chewing out Carruthers during the final explanation scene. Back in 221B, Holmes enjoys pulling the same ‘deduction’ trick on Watson that Watson played on him with Hilton Cubitt’s appearance in “Dancing Men” (pretending to have deduced something when in fact you have prior information about it). And of course his chemical experiment solves whatever’s going on with John Vincent Hound, but fills the entire flat with smoke and calls the fire brigade. 

So it ends with each of them having accepted his own flaws and the other’s strengths. Which would be entirely heartwarming, were it not for the fact that when Watson comes back with the paper, he catches Holmes in the act of rolling his sleeves back down and shoving the syringe drawer back into the desk.

So we’re four epsiodes into this series and we’ve seen that syringe in three of them. [As I explain in some detail here](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/155182367759/the-adventure-of-the-missing-three-quarter-and), Doyle doesn’t really present Holmes’s drug use as an addiction until pretty late in the saga (in the introduction to “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter,” to be precise). Most modern adaptations treat it as an addiction from the beginning, and that’s obviously what the Granada people have decided to do. In “Dancing Men,” during a late-night solo decoding session, Holmes takes out the syringe case, opens it, fondles it, then puts it back in the drawer and gets back to work. This falsifies his insistence in “Scandal” that he only uses when he’s not working. The difference between Watson’s histrionic reaction in “Scandal” and his angry but resigned reaction in “Solitary Cyclist” suggests that Watson has reached the point where he realizes he’s not going talk Holmes out of shooting up. 

Still, after “Naval Treaty” it’s nice to get back to an episode where the great partnership is in top form and there are many opportunities to enjoy their chemistry. As usual I find the guest stars somewhat underwhelming, and the “unmasking” of Carruthers unbearably cheesy; I’m also disappointed by how limp and helpless Violet is in the marriage scene, but this seems to be at least partly influenced by their obvious desire to reference the Paget illustrations.


	5. If You Are Not Too Sleepy: THE ADVENTURE OF THE CROOKED MAN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Crooked Man,” as a story, poses a lot of challenges for the adaptor, the main one being maintaining the viewer’s interest. Arthur Shaughnessy, who wrote the screenplay, rose to some of those challenges and not to others. Ultimately, this episode turns out to be a pretty good demonstration of the major strengths and weaknesses of the Granada team. That this adaptation does nothing to mitigate the orientalism, the jingoism, and the Victorian attitudes about disability that are baked into Doyle’s story is one issue. But the main problem–not unrelated, I would argue, to the first one–is that the farther into the episode you get, the more boring it becomes.

  * While I was watching the opening credits of one of the earlier episodes, a few days ago, my 9 year old daughter came to watch over my shoulder. “What’s this?” she said. I explained. “Looks boring,” she replied, and walked away.

This of course is exactly the attitude we’re all fighting as we try to interest the next generation in a TV show filmed in the mid-1980s. I remember, back when cable was new and MTV became a thing, people talking about how music videos were accelerating the pacing of other kinds of visual entertainment. Twenty-first century viewers are used to a lot more visual stimulation–which basically means a lot more editing–per minute than we made do with back in the dark ages. The Granada episodes will naturally feel slow to children of the millennium, especially those accustomed to  _Sherlock_ , whose production style usually appears to be trying to replicate Sherlock’s own manic hyperawareness and satisfy his craving for constant stimulation. 

But sometimes, you can’t blame the boring on that alone. “The Crooked Man,” as a story, poses a lot of challenges for the adaptor, the main one being maintaining the viewer’s interest. Arthur Shaughnessy, who wrote the screenplay, rose to some of those challenges and not to others. Ultimately, this episode turns out to be a pretty good demonstration of the major strengths and weaknesses of the Granada team. That this adaptation does nothing to mitigate the orientalism, the jingoism, and the Victorian attitudes about disability that are baked into Doyle’s story is one issue. But the main problem–not unrelated, I would argue, to the first one–is that the farther into the episode you get, the more boring it becomes.

Let me say up front that although it has some cultural and historical interest, as a story I’ve never liked “The Crooked Man” much. Like “The Engineer’s Thumb” and “The Five Orange Pips,” “The Crooked Man” seems to be just using Holmes’s investigation as an excuse to tell a sensational story about something else. “The Crooked Man” is mostly told rather than shown; Holmes has already done almost all the investigation before he drops by Watson’s place to ask if he wants to be in at the kill, and a few paragraphs later they’ve found Harry Wood and he then launches into his own narrative. Watson does almost nothing, and the investigation is rendered completely irrelevant after the coroner determines that Barclay died of apoplexy. If I’d been running the series, I personally would have left this one alone. 

So I wasn’t looking forward to it. But initially, going back to it, I was pleasantly surprised. Shaughnessy made some good calls, the most important being expanding Watson’s role. Hands down the best part of this episode is the first visit to Aldershot, where we see both Holmes and Watson in a somewhat new light. In Shaughnessy’s adaptation, Watson has brought the case to Holmes, and you can immediately see that Holmes’s attitude toward the military is completely different from Watson’s. Watson loves being back in the army atmosphere; his accent actually changes once he starts striding about the yard, and he’s so proud when he’s introducing himself to Major Murphy and giving his rank and regiment. Holmes, on the other hand, is manifestly uncomfortable here, and we find out why when Watson assures Murphy that Holmes understands the importance of keeping this on the down-low for the sake of the regiment’s reputation. For Watson, this really matters; it’s wrapped up in his notions of “honor,” and his own identity. But take a look at the military history Watson actually describes in  _A Study in Scarlet:_

**“IN the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.**

**The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.”**

It gets worse from there; at a military hospital he gets enteric fever (also known as typhoid fever, which is caused by salmonella…even if typhoid fever doesn’t kill you, it makes you wish you were dead) and then finally sent to stagnate in London. Watson doesn’t have a lot of reasons to love the British Army or to be loyal to it. 

Granted, Doyle seems to have progressively forgotten this history as the saga moves forward; we all know the wound eventually migrates to the leg; Watson’s memories of his service and his feelings about the Army migrate along with it. But as long as we’re in adaptation land anyway, we’re free to take Holmes’s interactions with Major Murphy as a deliberate disruption of Watson’s performance of respect and loyalty to an institution that doesn’t really deserve it. After first snapping at him over his hamhanded treatment of the media and his withholding of the facts, Holmes then maneuvers himself into this beautifully insinuating moment captured in the image above, where–as Murphy insists that Mrs. Barclay would be incapable of murder–Holmes rests his elbow on Murphy’s shoulder, looks at him, and without actually saying words basically tells Murphy, "So you’re in love with her then. Well, isn’t that delicious.” From the image out of context, of course, it looks like Holmes just loves himself a military man, especially one with a luxurious mustache and a full head of hair.

Anyway, my point is that this episode really brings home how important Brett was to this adaptation. When he’s on screen, it’s riveting. But there are large swathes of this episode devoted to the Barclay/Wood/Devoy backstory–as there more or less have to be–and it’s just really hard to care that much for that long about it. This is where you really feel the comparative inadequacy of the production values. Even on a good day, Granada Holmes is just a festival of crazy wigs and unconvincing facial hair; “The Crooked Man” is full of period touches and local color, none of it particularly compelling from a verisimilitude point of view. At a certain point you wonder whether it wouldn’t have been better just not to visualize Wood’s backstory and just stay in the room with Henry Wood’s narration. But then, when you do go back to the room and Henry Wood’s narration, it doesn’t really help.

And the bottom line here is, I suppose, that the 1857 mutiny in and of itself is just not as interesting to me as it was to Doyle’s contemporaries. It was certainly a huge deal for Doyle and his audiences, who even a generation later were still worrying about how long they’d be able to hold their imperial possessions. Doyle seems to have been especially anxious about this. Watson’s military history in  _Study in Scarlet_ connects him to a [famous military disaster](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.britishbattles.com%2Fsecond-afghan-war%2Fmaiwand.htm&t=YzE3ZTNmYmI2NDYxNDIzZGNlZjM4ZDIxMDFiMzBhY2NiZjhmZTgwOSxJc2NVb3hLcg%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159191342824%2Fif-you-are-not-too-sleepy-granada-holmes-the&m=1) from the Second Afghan War. The whole mystery surrounding Mary Morstan and her father in  _The Sign of Four_  also goes back to the 1857 mutiny, which is when the Agra treasure comes into the hands of Small and his three allies–all of whom may be thieves and murderers, but are at least loyal to the British Army and the fort they’re protecting. Doyle would eventually be knighted for the work he did trying to justify Britain’s indefensible conduct of the Boer War. So in “The Crooked Man,” the ‘scandal’ isn’t just Barclay’s personal treachery–the story summed up in Mrs. Barclay’s allusions to the biblical “David”–but British responsibility for the mutiny (since Barclay becomes, at the moment he sets Wood up for this, a mutineer himself). And this is interesting in a kind of intellectual way, but I can’t really  _care_  about it as much as you’d have to in order to find the second half of this episode compelling. Similarly, it’s hard to get a modern audience really anxious about the identity of the “monster” mystery beast whose prints are found at the scene. It’s from India. It’s a mongoose. So what.

There is an unexpected bright spot when Fiona Shaw suddenly turns up as Mrs. Barclay’s best friend:

You may remember her as Aunt Petunia from the Harry Potter films; for me her most indelible role will always be as Mrs. Nugent in  _The Butcher Boy_. Either way, though her performance is kind of odd, you can tell that you’re watching someone who has It–the ability to keep the camera and the viewer interested, even when what she’s doing is pretty mundane. And I should also point out that I have been noticing that these screenplays do spend more time than you might expect fleshing out the servant characters, and that I’ve now figured out that a lot of the writers for this series had also worked on  _Upstairs, Downstairs_ (the great-grandaddy of  _Downton Abbey_ ), which makes sense. So that’s a nice little bonus. In this case, it’s Jane, the maid who has witnessed Barclay’s abusive behavior toward his wife without being able to do anything about it, and who (in the opening scene) is obviously afraid that Barclay is hitting her behind that locked door. This is another addition–the story implies that Barclay had moods and was occasionally troubled by remorse, but it doesn’t suggest that this affected their marriage–and it generates interest and sympathy for the non-recurring characters more effectively than Doyle’s mutiny romance does. 

So basically, this episode shows you the best and the worst of Granada. The final scene with them smoking in 221B in their honest to God smoking jackets is quite heartwarming; Holmes is still training Watson without Watson realizing it, and it’s very sweet. But the flashbacks never quite deliver the reality effect that would really allow us to feel for Henry Wood and his undeniably tragic story. Ah well. On to THE SPECKLED BAND!





	6. Some Subtle and Horrible Crime: THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It absolutely baffles me that Moffat and Gatiss passed up the opportunity to do their take on “The Speckled Band.” It’s name-checked in “Scandal in Belgravia” in the title John gives one of Sherlock’s cases (”The Speckled Blonde”); but that’s all. As a story that feels very modern in some ways but is encumbered with Victorian Orientalism plus whatever it is that explains the 19th century British fascination with “gypsies,” and in which the H/W relationship game is pretty strong, you’d think it would be right in their wheelhouse. Well, never mind; Granada did one, and they did it right. There are of course some production values-related misfires. But the guest star playing Helen Stoner is a cut above; the creepiness is indeed creepy; and most of all, Brett and Burke make beautiful music together. And all of this gets even more affecting if you read “The Speckled Band,” as I do–and as I believe the whole production team does–as another story in which Helen Stoner was in more danger than Doyle was able to tell us about at the time.

  * If you’re only going to watch one episode from the Brett/Burke era, this is the one. “The Speckled Band” is, first of all, one of the best Holmes stories Doyle ever wrote, despite the fact that it is riddled with unfortunate factual errors. While the mystery itself is exciting enough, it’s also pretty clear that there’s more going on beneath the surface. Dr. Roylott is up there with Moriarty and Charles Augustus Milverton as one of the truly memorable villains of ACD canon. The story is set before Watson’s marriage–the conceit is that Watson held off on publishing it until Helen Stoner (later Armitage) died–and it famously starts with Holmes in Watson’s bedroom, waking him up at an ungodly hour of the morning. This story helps lay the foundation for Action Hero Holmes, and also establishes Holmes as someone who, while he still takes no romantic interest in women, is always ready to risk life and limb to assist a lady in need. The atmosphere of horror and suspense stands up better for modern readers than it does in many another.

It absolutely baffles me that Moffat and Gatiss passed up the opportunity to do their take on “The Speckled Band.” It’s name-checked in “Scandal in Belgravia” in the title John gives one of Sherlock’s cases (”The Speckled Blonde”); but that’s all. As a story that feels very modern in some ways but is encumbered with Victorian Orientalism plus whatever it is that explains the 19th century British fascination with “gypsies,” and in which the H/W relationship game is pretty strong, you’d think it would be right in their wheelhouse. Well, never mind; Granada did one, and they did it right. There are of course some production values-related misfires. But the guest star playing Helen Stoner is a cut above; the creepiness is indeed creepy; and most of all, Brett and Burke make beautiful music together. And all of this gets even more affecting if you read “The Speckled Band,” as I do–and as I believe the whole production team does–as another story in which Helen Stoner was in more danger than Doyle was able to tell us about at the time.

All right, let’s talk about snakes.

My nom de Internet was not chosen because I have a soft spot for snakes; it was a reference to the protagonist of the show  _Blackadder_. Nevertheless, because I named myself after a snake, I eventually came to take an interest in them; plus, I lived near a friend for a while who was a serious snake nut and had filled her house with boas and pythons. So, although I am not the first to point this out by any means, I can confirm from experience that Doyle knew fuck-all about how snakes work. Let me just list the Major Errors Of The Speckled Band:

* Snakes don’t drink milk. They’re not mammals.

* A snake could not climb down a bell-pull. For snake locomotion they need something rigid to push against. You can totally tell this in the final credits of this episode, where the snake is quite obviously NOT crawling down a bell-pull, but rather crawling along the top of something which is really horizontal and probably either concealing or attached to a long wooden rod.

* Snakes don’t have external ears. We used to think that meant snakes couldn’t hear, but it turns out they can. However, according to this interesting explanation of how scientists figured out how snakes can hear, [“You can’t train snakes to respond to sounds with certain behaviors.”](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencemag.org%2Fnews%2F2011%2F12%2Fvibrating-skulls-help-snakes-hear&t=NzE1ZmI2YmRmZjExYzY1MjZlZGQ0ZDAwZGIzOTRkMDEyYzExMzVjNCxsVkZCRDB5ZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159273199279%2Fsome-subtle-and-horrible-crime-granada&m=1) The sounds they hear best, it turns out, are at the low end of the spectrum. So the whistle is also bullshit. 

Basically, all the evidence Holmes uses to deduce the existence of the snake is wack, which is a pity. But it doesn’t really matter to people’s enjoyment of the story; and that’s partly because a snake is never just a snake. In the case of “The Speckled Band,” the snake–like the cheetah, the baboon, and the other exotic animals roaming the grounds–is a symbol of Roylott’s ruthless and uncivilized nature. Doyle’s story blames a lot of what is wrong with Roylott on his exposure to the mysterious East, whence cometh deadly swamp adders (there is no “Indian swamp adder”), a knowledge of poison, and an inability to regulate one’s passions and appetites. So there’s Orientalism aplenty in “The Speckled Band;” but that doesn’t exhaust the snake’s symbolic possibilities. 

One thing I really like about this adaptation is the scene of Holmes and Watson in the little guest hovel, in the dark, waiting for Helen Stoner to signal them to come up to the house. As Holmes starts walking Watson through the observations and deductions he made during his examination of Julia Stoner’s room, your skin sort of starts to crawl, much the way Watson’s evidently does. I love Brett’s delivery here. The “zest” that he felt after his confrontation with Roylott has evaporated. Once Holmes realizes what’s really at stake, it’s not fun any more; he’s very worried, both about Helen Stoner and about Watson. “I really have some scruples taking you tonight,” he says, looking sadly up at Watson through the light and shadow. “There is a distinct element of danger.” From the way Holmes’s hand shakes as he lays out his Snake Defense Kit on the bed, we can gather that Holmes shares Indiana Jones’s feelings about snakes. He wants Watson there, because he himself is terrified; but he doesn’t want to expose Watson to the same terror. So in this conversation, he doesn’t mention the snake. Instead, he talks–elliptically, but in a way which seems to be pretty clear to Watson–about what the snake stands for.

The most freighted moment in that conversation comes when Holmes tells Watson that the bed in Julia’s room was bolted to the floor. Because it’s at that moment that the subtextual aspect of Roylott’s M. O. becomes clearest. Literally, this is about giving the snake a direct path to the victim. But that particular clue reveals how Roylott’s murder plot is a metaphor for sexual abuse. The snake comes with built-in phallic connotations anyway; and here’s Roylott deliberately setting up Julia’s room–right next to his own–in such a way that his ‘snake’ can get into bed with her in the middle of the night without anyone else knowing. Clamping the bed to the floor wouldn’t really be that important literally–the whole plan depends on Julia not noticing the snake until she’s been actually bitten, so why should she want to move her bed in the first place?–but it’s very important as a symbol of how Roylott is deliberately and cold-bloodedly destroying Julia’s ability to defend herself against him. All of this is of a piece with the rest of Roylott’s observable behavior. He isolates his daughters from their friends and family; he alienates the servants so there will be no witnesses to what goes on in that house; he surrounds the house itself with sentries (human and animal) that are loyal to him; he actively seeks to prevent them from marrying; he stalks and spies on them; and he has left visible bruises on Helen’s wrist. He could not be any more clearly marked as an abuser. When you throw in the fact that Helen and Julia routinely lock themselves in when they go to bed at night–supposedly because of the wild animals on the loose–I think we are safe in reading Julia’s murder as an allegory for sexual abuse.

And it starts to seem, during that conversation in the shed, that Holmes might have been chewing on that deduction for a while, and that Watson is starting to finally get it. Murder, of course, is appalling enough. But in that moment of unspoken explication– “I begin to see what you are driving at,” says the man who normally needs such things spelled out for him–I think we can see the transmission of forbidden knowledge. 

Whether I’m right about that or not, it remains the case that one of the best things about this adaptation is the way it emphasizes how much Holmes and Watson share at this point–especially their increasingly urgent concern for their vulnerable client. This isn’t one of those situations where Watson does the client handling and Holmes does the deducing. Holmes is the one who notices Helen’s bruises. Holmes is the one who lets Helen know that he knows her father is abusing her. Most importantly, Holmes is the one who instantly recognizes that her fear of being moved into Julia’s room–into the trap Roylott set for his last victim–is entirely justified. Holmes is a consulting detective and a recoverer of lost opal tiaras and a resolver of diplomatic crises and a decipherer of cryptograms and all that; but this episode emphasizes his function as  _the person who will believe you._ The person who won’t say, when you come to him with some vague forebodings and some weird observations you can’t explain and tell him that you’re afraid something terrible is about to happen to you, that you’re making it up because such things don’t happen and so it must all be in your head. Holmes, instead, says, “These are deep waters indeed,” and promises to come down to your isolated house on the next available train. No wonder Helen says her heart already feels lighter when she leaves. The way Holmes handles Roylott when he shows up is priceless:

You can just see it in the eyes and the smile: All right, fuck this guy. It’s not about the puzzle for him any more. This is about getting Helen Stoner away from this asshole. And yeah, this is a story about a woman being saved by a man; but one of the things I like about it is that Brett and the director seem, to some extent, self-conscious about the way Holmes uses the privilege Victorian society grants him as a gentleman to block Roylott’s abuse of the same privilege. There’s an interesting cut in which Holmes walks toward his desk to get the record of Mrs. Farintosh’s case, and the next thing we see is Roylott going through Helen’s room and finding Mrs. Farintosh’s letter. Brett plays his initial consultation with Helen as if Holmes knows somehow that she’s already under surveillance: it’s as if, by demystifying his own deduction trick, he’s trying to let her know that a) he’s just as smart as Roylott is and b) there’s no magic to the way he’s keeping track of you, I know how this works and I can show you how it works. 

All right. So the other thing I love about this episode is just how at home with each other Holmes and Watson are throughout. Lots of unspoken communication, lots of working as a team without talking about it, and a fair number of indications that this is turning into something more than an intimate friendship. When Roylott busts in and demands to know which one of them is Holmes, you can see Watson about to speak up and then Holmes interrupt him and draw Roylott’s fire; you can also see Watson literally jump out of his seat ready to fight once Roylott picks up the poker. Before waking Watson up, Holmes treats himself to a good long look at Watson in bed; the low-key battle over whether they’re going to make time for food or not has become so routinized that it makes them seem like they’ve already been married for 20 years; Holmes seems almost childishly pleased at the prospect of a weekend getaway for the two of them as he reminds Watson to bring his toothbrush; they have a cute little moment down on their hands and knees together as Watson tries to apply Holmes’s methods and both of them realize he’s accomplishing nothing; it’s just all so easy and so intimate and just exactly what you come to Granada Holmes for. The syringe is nowhere in sight. There’s a great moment when Holmes gets down to look at the floorboards with the magnifying glass and Helen looks over at Watson like, “What is the matter with him?” and Watson just gives her this little nod: it’s OK, don’t worry, this is normal. And of course there’s the famous train car scene, where they’re both so eager to get into each other’s space as they share information. It provides a much-needed countervibe to the creepiness of what’s going on with Helen and Roylott, as if their happiness is riding to the rescue of Helen’s misery. This is the way I always write it when I can: the drama is in the story, not in the relationship. 

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that Watson can’t actually see the snake when it finally shows up. But I don’t have time to get into what that might mean. On to the next one! 





	7. The Devil's Pet Baits: THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did I say that if you only watch one episode from the Brett/Burke era it should be “The Speckled Band?” That was MADNESS. You should NOT watch only one episode from this era, you should and you must watch BOTH “The Speckled Band” and “The Blue Carbuncle,” which may perhaps be Granada’s greatest gift to the fandom. I know it’s almost Easter; but honestly, any time you watch “The Blue Carbuncle,” it’s Christmas. The production values are generally pretty good: Victoriana is everywhere, all the guest stars seem to be bringing their A game, there are more extras running around in this episode than all of the earlier ones combined, and all in all it reminds me pleasantly of another vintage 1980s Christmas special, the George C. Scott A Christmas Carol. But the best thing about this episode is that we get to watch Holmes and Watson have Christmas together in 221B. All y’all who Johnlock and are constantly pining after cozy domestic scenes of the two of them making tea and wearing jumpers together, I just want you to know that “The Blue Carbuncle” has ALL of that, and it is as warm and beautiful and delicious as a slice of plum pudding isn’t.

  


Did I say that if you only watch one episode from the Brett/Burke era it should be “The Speckled Band?” That was MADNESS. You should NOT watch only one episode from this era, you should and you must watch BOTH “The Speckled Band” and “The Blue Carbuncle,” which may perhaps be Granada’s greatest gift to the fandom. I know it’s almost Easter; but honestly, any time you watch “The Blue Carbuncle,” it’s Christmas. The production values are generally pretty good: Victoriana is everywhere, all the guest stars seem to be bringing their A game, there are more extras running around in this episode than all of the earlier ones combined, and all in all it reminds me pleasantly of another vintage 1980s Christmas special, the George C. Scott  _A Christmas Carol._ But the best thing about this episode is that we get to watch Holmes and Watson have Christmas together in 221B. All y’all who Johnlock and are constantly pining after cozy domestic scenes of the two of them making tea and wearing jumpers together, I just want you to know that “The Blue Carbuncle” has ALL of that, and it is as warm and beautiful and delicious as a slice of plum pudding isn’t.

(In the late 1980s my family moved to London and I had my first traditional English Christmas dinner, and I never got over the disappointment. But I digress.)

Moffat and Gatiss never did an episode based on this one, though they did incorporate Henry Baker’s hat into “The Empty Hearse.” There’s so much more they could have done with it, and which [I, in my modest way, tried to do](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F786119%2Fchapters%2F1482709&t=NzExOGQ0YmQ4ODI1OTAzMjE3MWI2NTE1MmY2ZjZlNmZlZGM2YjliNyxEV2hDZVNNMA%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159405579949%2Fthe-devils-pet-baits-granada-holmes-the-blue&m=1). But maybe they were afraid they couldn’t do it as well as Granada did.

Brett and Burke’s teamwork in this episode is outstanding, and that is probably what I’m going to spend most of my time talking about. But there are some very odd things about “The Blue Carbuncle” as a story that this adaptation doesn’t iron out—most of them relating directly to the blue carbuncle itself.

Most of these episodes have a cold open showing how the client got into his or her mess, followed by the credits. The beginning of “The Blue Carbuncle’s” cold open is straight-up ridiculous. It’s an attempt to dramatize, in the cheesiest possible fashion, Holmes’s speech about precious stones as “the devil’s pet baits.” It’s the only real misfire—indeed, once we get to the Hotel Cosmopolitan, the rest of the cold open is a cut above–and I wouldn’t be so churlish as to bring it up if it didn’t give me an excuse to talk about possibly my favorite Victorian novel ever, Wilkie Collins’s  _The Moonstone_. Because that is where all of this precious jewel jazz is coming from.

In Collins’s novel, the Moonstone is a large diamond from India which was, hundreds of years ago, stolen out of the head of a statue in a Hindu temple in Somnath and then passed from plunderer to plunderer until it finally winds up in England, in the hands of a British officer who killed three people in cold blood to get it. The diamond is supposed to have been cursed at the time of the original theft, and to bring nothing but bad luck to anyone who owns it. What happens after “the wicked old Colonel” leaves this jewel to his beautiful niece on her 20th birthday is a pretty wild ride, and I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read this novel. Suffice it to say that the jewel and its curse give Collins a means of working through some very interesting questions about responsibility and guilt, especially as relates to the British colonization of India and the aristocracy’s treatment of the ‘lower’ classes, as well as some delightful occasions for skewering Victorian morality.

At any rate, the Blue Carbuncle is sort of a mini-Moonstone. Just as Collins made his giant diamond special by giving it an unusual color and characteristics (the Moonstone is yellow, and it has a flaw at its heart which makes its value very hard to estimate), Doyle makes his gem just a little extra: “it has every property of the carbuncle,” except that it’s not red, it’s blue. Well, red color is actually the only defining characteristic of the carbuncle. The red color is what makes them carbuncles. But ANYWAY. 

From the credits onward, this episode is structured as a kind of day-in-the-life narrative—a  _tranche de plum pudding_ , if you will—for Holmes and Watson. It starts early in the morning, as Watson heads off to do some Christmas shopping, and ends at midnight as the bells ring in Christmas day. Everything about their part of this episode is a source of delight, from the moment Mrs. Hudson busts in to roust an extremely startled and displeased Holmes out of bed to the moment they sit down to their very late supper. Holmes starts the day in glorious disarray. He’s apparently slept in his dressing-gown or lab coat or whatever that is; literally the first thing he does after telling Mrs. Hudson to “go away” is to reach for a cigarette; and he is in the act of sneaking out to the sitting room to look for matches when Peterson surprises him and forces poor Holmes to have a client consultation with terrible (yet inviting) bedhead and in what are basically his pajamas. Holmes doing his best to be polite to Peterson while he rambles on about his goose and hat adventure, while once or twice nearly falling asleep, is just a treat to watch; but it’s just the beginning. Holmes is sort of coming into focus and starting to take an interest in the situation as he shoos Peterson and the goose out—he keeps sniffing his fingers, I suppose because of the lime cream from the hat lining. He nevertheless goes back to bed; but then he pops out to take a look at the hat and…I’ll just do the gif:

[Originally posted by gatissed](https://tmblr.co/Z2Xt-v1zXrP0S)

I mean that is the look of love right there. The look that says, I’m sorry my darling, I didn’t mean to take you for granted, let me see if I can make it up to you by making tender love to you. And yes, he is giving that look to a hat. And that right there is the distilled essence and quintessential magic of Sherlock Motherfucking Holmes.

When Watson comes back in, laden with presents and holly and full of the details on the Hotel Cosmopolitan robbery, Holmes is just sitting there in his deshabille, gazing at the hat. Watson is a little piqued to find out he’s being ignored; but again, the beauty of Granada Holmes is how comfortable they are with each other. Watson’s not going to lose his temper over it; after his bit of snark, he happily heads over to his desk to start going through the Christmas cards and teasing Holmes about what a sinister and terrible criminal history must be attached to that hat. The Reading of the Hat has to be one of the best deduction bits Doyle wrote for Holmes, and Brett and Burke actually make it better. They’re both playing with each other, Holmes adopting a condescending pity in his explanation and Watson pretending to be annoyed by it, and it builds to a nice climax right at the moment that Peterson busts in with the carbuncle.

From that moment on, both of our boys have the scent in their nostrils and are on the trail, and it’s beautiful to watch. The way they both sit there greedily staring at Mr. Henry Baker, hoping he’ll turn out to be the most dangerous jewel thief in London, is a master class in reactions all by itself:

[Originally posted by holligenet](https://tmblr.co/Z71JiwS94FoN)

And once they’re out and about, well, Watson’s sad about leaving the beer behind and he bitches about the cold, but this is absolutely the best way either of them could have thought up to spend Christmas eve and Brett and Burke find a million ways of letting us know that. Watson joining in with Holmes on the “bet” to get the information out of Breckenridge is delightful; he almost drops the ball, but then he just sails on into the con with such confidence and zest it makes your heart grow a size just to watch him.

Once they get back to 221B, things get more serious as their perspectives start to diverge. The way Holmes leads Ryder into his little trap once they get indoors is really a little bit scary. I mean if anyone ever asks you to draw your chair up to the fire in the tone of voice Jeremy Brett uses at that moment, RUN AWAY. He’s obviously furious with Ryder over the way he’s framed Horner— he looked like he was ignoring Watson’s recitation of the newspaper article, but now suddenly Holmes has total recall of all the details—but at first, it’s cold anger, wrapped in a velvety soft voice that almost makes it seem inviting. Watson pretty much drops out of the action, watching Holmes reduce Ryder to a quivering jelly, and then looking on aghast as Holmes lets him go. When Watson says he’s “surprised,” and Holmes snaps back at him, the emotions on both sides are all of a sudden intense and antagonistic. You see, for a moment, how deep the divisions go. Watson didn’t approve of letting Joseph Harrison go in “Naval Treaty” either. In this case, there really are no extenuating circumstances, and Holmes isn’t protecting anyone; one can only assume that he really does hate prisons and doesn’t want to put someone who’s not already violent into one. Watson, who speaks of his Army years as if they were the best time of his life, can’t see Britain and its institutions the same way Holmes does. But just as it looks like this might turn into an argument, the bells ring, and it’s Christmas.

I love their last little interaction at the dinner table for so many reasons. One, it flips the tables on the running gag about food; Holmes is about to just tuck in when Watson brings up Horner, and he’s the one left looking longingly at the untasted supper as they get up and head out to the police station. Two, it shows Watson getting what he *really* wants—justice for the innocent and suffering Horner—without having to stop Holmes from being Holmes. And three, I will admit, the Dickensian manipulation got to me even though I know better and I do sort of cry a little bit every time I see Horner coming out of the jail to embrace his two kids while his tearful wife looks on.

So all the way through, this is a great episode in terms of performances. From Brett and Burke first and foremost; but also from the Horners, from the Countess of Morcar, from Mr. Henry Baker, from Peterson, from the landlord at the Alpha, from Breckenridge, even from Ryder’s sister the urban goose-farmer. There’s only one bone I have to pick with it really: what is up with Holmes and that blue carbuncle?

This is a problem inherited from the original story, where Holmes says contradictory things about what he plans to do with the stone. First he says he’s dropping a line to the Countess of Morcar to say that he has it. Then he says he’s going to keep it “in my private museum.” This has been driving Holmes fans nuts for decades. Peterson’s the one who found it; he’s owed a one thousand pound reward; is Holmes just going to keep him from it? If Holmes told the Countess of Morcar he had it, how’s he planning to keep it? What’s he planning to tell her? Isn’t the stone evidence of Horner’s innocence, and wouldn’t it help his case to turn it over? Why the everloving figgypudding would Holmes just…steal it?

My only theory about this, as far as Doyle is concerned, is that Doyle initially intended for Holmes to give it back to the Countess because he was thinking of this as a straightforward robbery plot…but then at the end of the story, as the questions of guilt and responsibility come into focus,  _The Moonstone_  suddenly reasserts itself. It’s important for  _The Moonstone_  that in the end, the Moonstone  _doesn’t_  go back to its legal owner. The novel believes in the curse enough to want the thing far away from all the people who get a happy ending. By locking it up in his drawer, Holmes is doing what Collins gets the plot to do at the end of  _The Moonstone_ : he ends the Blue Carbuncle’s trail of blood by taking it out of circulation. The fact that, in the Granada adaptation, we see it going into the same drawer that contains his syringe emphasizes the ways in which the stone’s possibly magical power over people simulates some of the effects of addiction. So he may be doing a public service; but he is also, possibly, feeding an illicit but irresistible desire.

So at the end of the day, there is maybe some darkness hiding under all the holly. But overall, this rewatch was one of the happiest hours I’ve spent in front of the television. Or, in this case, computer screen.


	8. Quite a Remarkable Woman: THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Behind the cut tag, I will of course be talking about our two favorite people; but I am also going to spend some time on Natasha Richardson and Violet Hunter, one of the Remarkable Women of ACD Canon. Because Violet and I go way back; and because “The Copper Beeches” is yet another ACD story where the actual mystery is just the tip of the creepiness iceberg.

So, last night I fetched myself a glass of water and a healthy snack, fired up “Copper Beeches,” and sat back to enjoy a nice little unwind after a somewhat exasperating day, when this happened:

I did not actually do a spit take. But I did sit up and say, “Oh SHIT! She was THAT Natasha Richardson!”

See…I videotaped these–YES! I TAPED these episodes as they were broadcast on PBS, using a VCR, so that I could watch them later, because that was THE ONLY WAY TO DO THAT at the time–and I watched them kind of a lot. These opening credits were my friends. “Natasha Richardson,” I would say, in the days long before IMDB was thought of. “Wonder if she’s related to Miranda Richardson. Well, she was good, anyway.”

But that was 30 years ago, and although the name “Natasha Richardson” has been rattling around in my brain all this time, never until this exact second did I come to realize that the Natasha Richardson who played Violet Hunter in “The Copper Beeches” grew up to become the Natasha Richardson who would tragically die in 2009 after sustaining a head injury while skiing, leaving Liam Neeson and their children suddenly bereft.

It was an uncanny moment. It’s like having someone work in the next cubicle over for five years and you sort of chat once in a while but don’t really talk and then all of a sudden you discover one day that you were actually friends with her in kindergarten. It’s freaky. 

But “The Copper Beeches” is a deeply creepy story, so I guess it’s cosmically appropriate, somehow, to be wafted into this episode feeling the cold breath of mortality on the nape of your neck. Look at that brooding ancestral hulk. Does that look to you like a good place to take a live-in job?

Behind the cut tag, I will of course be talking about our two favorite people; but I am also going to spend some time on Natasha Richardson and Violet Hunter, one of the Remarkable Women of ACD Canon. Because Violet and I go way back; and because “The Copper Beeches” is yet another ACD story where the actual mystery is just the tip of the creepiness iceberg.

Violet and I go back, in fact, about 35 years, to when I was 12 or 13 and my father brought home a giant two-volume copy of William S. Baring-Gould’s  _The Annotated Sherlock Holmes._ I discovered through it that previous generations of Holmes fandom–the guys who invented the Great Game, and used to write articles about Holmes for the  _Baker Street Journal_  as if he were a real person–had made up some fanon about Violet Hunter which, even at the time, annoyed me, and which I cannot look back upon now without being filled with rage. Isaac S. George, in 1949, wrote a piece for the BSJ titled “Violet the Hunter” in which he argued that the case itself was essentially a put-up job and that Violet’s real goal throughout is to seduce Holmes. As evidence, he cited Violet’s occasional references to her own remarkable qualities (her “artistic” hair, her “naturally observant” personality), which she obviously could ONLY be pointing out in a brazen attempt to attract him, the winsomely beseeching tone of her telegram (”Do come!”), the fact that she smiles at him, and the fact that Holmes’s actual participation in this case is unusually peripheral. This theory became so popular in the boys’ club that used to be the official fandom that she became widely known as Violet the Hunter. In other words, as with Irene Adler, the boys could only explain the presence of a compelling and independent female character within an ACD story by turning her into a love interest. But this move is extra cruel in Violet’s case, because so much of the satisfaction the “Violet the Hunter” crowd derives from this fanon comes from the one-sidedness of VIolet’s crush and the implied humiliation of her failure as seductress. Irene Adler at least lives on in Holmes’s memory. Poor Violet fades immediately: according to Watson, Holmes “manifested no further interest in her when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems.”

I said it 30 years ago and I’ll say it again: Gentlemen, I call bullshit. 

I will call it first relative to the story as written; and then I will talk about how the Granada adaptation does full justice to both Violet Hunter’s extraordinariness and Holmes and Watson’s respect for her.

So this is now our third dramatization of a story revolving around a woman who’s left some money that a man is trying to pry out of her. (“Solitary Cyclist” and “Speckled Band” are the others). And, as with the other two, this is really a story about how vulnerable Victorian women still are to male predation. And yet in each case, the client is valued and trusted by Holmes for her courage and her independent spirit. This is why I have always had so very little patience for Moffat’s bullshit about how  _Sherlock_  was liberating the Holmes stories from all that bad old Victorian sexism. With all the advantages that time confers, Moffat was still never willing to give any of the female characters on  _Sherlock_ as much independence or agency as Doyle gave Violet Hunter. “The Copper Beeches” is really Violet’s story. Violet isn’t just the client; she’s the detective. She’s really using Holmes the way Sherlock uses Lestrade: as back-up in case things go sideways. And as much as Holmes bitches about this case at the beginning of the episode, by the end of it, he’s pretty much embraced that role and is all right with it.

Consider that in “The Copper Beeches” as written: 

* Violet tells Holmes at their first consultation that she’s not really asking for his advice or permission; she’s already decided she’ll take the job. 

* When Holmes asks Violet what she thinks is going on, she proposes a theory which is wrong, but which Holmes accepts as, given their available evidence, “the most probable explanation.”

* Once at the Copper Beeches, Violet searches the place (discovering Alice’s coil of hair and the inhabitant of the locked-up wing of the house), uses the mirror trick to figure out what’s behind her when she’s sitting in front of the window, and in general gets so close to uncovering the secret that Rucastle threatens to feed her to the mastiff if she doesn’t STOP investigating.  

* At her meeting with Holmes and Watson, Holmes gives her what he evidently considers a dangerous assignment, saying he wouldn’t ask her to do this if she weren’t “quite an exceptional woman.”

* Though Holmes is the one to put the explanation together in the end, he has very little practical impact. His and Watson’s intervention is actually counterproductive; they very nearly cock-up a perfectly good escape plan that had already been concocted between Alice and her fiance with the help of Mrs. Toller. They really have two main functions in this story: 1) punish the villain (inadvertently and indirectly; like Roylott, Rucastle is attacked during all the confusion by the animal he’s weaponized) and 2) protect the detective (i.e., Violet). Like I said: Lestrade.

In this way, “The Copper Beeches” betrays Doyle’s fidelity to sensation fiction. That’s exactly what Holmes is arguing with Watson about in that delightful opening conversation about “Watson’s” writing; Watson admits that “I cannot quite hold myself absolved from the charge of sensationalism which has been urged against my records,” and he does it with a smile. That conversation is Doyle’s little sorry-not-sorry to his critics: yes, I am a sensationalist, and you love it and if you can’t acknowledge that well FUCK YOU. Holmes and Watson are having this argument right now because “The Copper Beeches” is in fact very reminiscent of sensation fiction, the genre which gave birth to the mystery. It’s a kind of  _Jane Eyre/ Woman in White_  crossover (Doyle stole only from the best). The classic sensation novel usually involves a woman in peril, but usually does NOT involve an official detective. The mystery is resolved by the characters who are motivated to do it (because the Dark Secret or the villain is endangering or blocking them). Even in  _The Moonstone_ , identified by many as the first real detective novel in English, the professional detective exits the story after the first section, leaving the romantic hero to take up the case and uncover the truth. Violet is following the footsteps of  _The Woman in White_ ’s Marian Halcombe, one of the best female characters to come out of sensation fiction and a fearless unofficial detective even in the face of the machinations of the evil Count Fosco.

Holmes gets that. He accepts Violet’s right to make her own decision about taking the job; he does tell her he thinks it’s dangerous but he doesn’t try to talk her out of going. He agrees to act as her back-up, promising to come down to help if sent for. When Violet reports to him on her investigation, Holmes approves: “You seem to have acted all through this matter as a very brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter.” Holmes is content to play out the role that, conditions being what they are, Violet can’t play herself: defending her and the victim against the villain’s violence. 

The Granada adaptation gets this too. What’s more, they work pretty hard at bringing through all the of the  **structural**  reasons that women like Violet Hunter were dependent on the protection of male figures. The reconstruction of Violet’s first meeting with Rucastle at Westaway’s does a fantastic job with this. Violet is one of a million single women of genteel background in London who are looking for a situation. Her profession requires her to go, alone, into the house of a bunch of complete strangers and live there, cut off from outside help, often without getting any actual cash payment until the end of the quarter. It’s a situation ripe with the potential for abuse, and this scene really brings that home. It’s clear from Richardson’s reactions in this scene that she is picking up creeper vibes from Rucastle immediately; and indeed, they are powerful enough to be registering in telegraph wires 10 miles away. She’s well aware that all of the weird questions Rucastle is asking her–would you mind wearing what we tell you to wear, and moving the way we tell you to move–and Rucastle’s obvious fascination with her physical appearance would all admit of one fairly simple explanation: he’s not looking for a governess, he’s looking for a sex toy, and he’s already got some fairly kinky scenarios he plans to enact as soon as she shows up, possibly with his wife. So she and Rucastle are having this very sexually charged conversation, as Violet tries to defend herself without outright angering Miss Stoper’s new favorite client, while Miss Stoper sits there behind the desk pretending this is a normal interview–because she wants the commission. Violet is being put at risk here not just by the Big Bad but by Stoper’s clearly marked decision to overlook the obvious sketchiness of this situation in order to make a buck for her agency. That she’s essentially pimping Violet out to a client planning to abuse her doesn’t bother Miss Stoper at all. Probably she’s done it before.

This is why Violet needs to get Sherlock Holmes’s attention. It has nothing to do with romance. She knows she wants to take this job; she needs the money, but she’s also, I think, intrigued by the mystery. However, she’s way too smart to go into this situation alone and unprotected. If she becomes imprisoned in this house (as she effectively does, given the locks and the mastiff), she may not be able to get herself out of it unassisted. She needs someone on the outside who knows where she is and is ready to help bust her out if necessary. She understands–because she has been dealing with this for her entire career–the insight with which Holmes shocks Watson on their trip through the “smiling” countryside: that the homes of the rich can be far more dangerous than the slums of the poor. 

Richardson brought to the role just the right combination of strength and vulnerability; she’s believable both as the intrepid investigator and as the endangered victim. It’s largely thanks to her and Ackland that the large chunks of this episode that don’t feature Holmes and Watson are gripping instead of boring (as in, say, “The Crooked Man”). The screenplay, meanwhile, seems to have attempted to mitigate *against* the Violet the Hunter reading. Some of the dialogue used to support that theory is reassigned (often to Watson), and when Watson is reading his conclusion out loud to Holmes at the end of the episode, he omits the line about being disappointed that Holmes no longer took an interest in her after the case was over. It’s probably Richardson’s performance that accounts for my love for an episode where Holmes and Watson do comparatively little, and it is proof that you CAN write an episode around a female character and still have it be a perfectly viable Sherlock Holmes story.

Speaking of which: though Holmes and Watson are secondary in this story, every scene they have together is a precious gem. Their opening banter in 221B about Watson’s literary efforts, which has been massaged a bit to be more dynamic and dramatic than in the story, is a thing of beauty, as is Brett’s performance of Holmes’s surprising yet not out of character when you think about it insecurity about his talent and his profession. Brett plays Holmes’s bitterness about becoming an agency for the recovery of lost lead-pencils as genuine: whether he’s going through an actual slump or whether he’s just in a funk, he’s starting to crave a kind of validation that Watson’s stories, admiring though they are, don’t provide. Maybe at this moment he wishes he had taken the credit for some of those cases where he let the police have it. The train conversation about evil in the countryside is also a masterpiece; and even in the action sequences it really does your heart good to see them both flinging off their coats and hats as they run up the central staircase. 

From their point of view, the arc of the episode is about getting Holmes out of his snit fit and forcing him to make his peace with the vagaries of his profession–specifically, making sensationalism his friend. The final scene, with Watson slowly and savoringly reading his own prose out loud while Holmes smokes and pretends he loves it, is a great negotiation of the formulaic return to the status quo ante. Holmes promises to defer to Watson’s literary judgment; Watson says, “Good.” Holmes gets the last ‘word’ in via an aggrieved look at the camera; but Watson probably knows that, and doesn’t care. He’s got his validation; Holmes has his; Violet is no longer at the mercy of middlemen like Westaway’s, and all’s right with the world.


	9. A Greek Tragedy: THE ADVENTURE OF THE GREEK INTERPRETER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a fine line between a chase scene and a train wreck.
> 
> This story was adapted by Derek Marlowe, who appears to have been under the impression that his name should have been Philip Marlowe. The first half is quite entertaining, even endearing, in classic Granada Holmes style. Then, Marlowe runs out of story, and fills out the rest of the hour with a hardboiled detective AU involving a chase on a train, guns, extrajudicial murder, and a femme fatale. “You still retain your low opinion of women,” says Mycroft to Sherlock, after the case wraps up. No, Mycroft; no, he doesn’t. I hate to be the one to break it to you…but that man you’re talking to isn’t really your brother. 
> 
> Below, I will discuss the good, the bad, and the gratuitously misogynistic. You have been warned.

There’s a fine line between a chase scene and a train wreck.

This story was adapted by Derek Marlowe, who appears to have been under the impression that his name should have been Philip Marlowe. The first half is quite entertaining, even endearing, in classic Granada Holmes style. Then, Marlowe runs out of story, and fills out the rest of the hour with a hardboiled detective AU involving a chase on a train, guns, extrajudicial murder, and a femme fatale. “You still retain your low opinion of women,” says Mycroft to Sherlock, after the case wraps up. No, Mycroft; no, he doesn’t. I hate to be the one to break it to you…but that man you’re talking to isn’t really your brother. 

Below, I will discuss the good, the bad, and the gratuitously misogynistic. You have been warned.

For about half an hour, this episode is pretty effective. There is not a lot of actual detective work that goes into solving this case in “Greek Interpreter;” but the situation itself is legitimately suspenseful and ultimately tragic (even more so to me in 2017 than it was in 1985), and of course we owe to it the introduction of Sherlock Holmes’s smarter brother, Mycroft. Charles Gray, whose other main claim to fame was playing the Criminologist in the film of  _The Rocky Horror Picture Show,_ is quite engaging as Mycroft; if anything, he’s a little too avuncular and affable for someone whose supposed “shyness and misanthropy” qualifies him for the Diogenes Club. But it’s all kinds of fun watching Holmes and Watson interact with him and react to him. Brett convinces us of the long-standing relationship instantly and effortlessly,  and Burke…well, much about Watson’s love admiration for Holmes is conveyed by the look of pure wonder and joy on his face as he discovers that in fact the universe is marvelous enough to contain TWO human beings like Sherlock Holmes.

For all the hoo-ha about how terrifying Mycroft’s massive intellect is, however, as written, “The Greek Interpreter” doesn’t give Mycroft much time to shine. Apart from the deductions game he plays with Sherlock at the window in the Diogenes Club, Mycroft solves the case not with brainpower but by doing something simple, effective, and also entirely thoughtless: he puts an ad in all the papers asking for information about Paul and Sophia Kratides. This does solve the mystery–they find the house only because someone’s answered the ad–but of course it puts their client, Mr. Melas, in mortal danger. Holmes’s impatience throughout with Mycroft’s failure to consider the human consequences of his actions is clearly telegraphed by Brett’s reactions. This is really an action/suspense plot, where the real question is not how to solve a puzzle but whether they’ll be able to save Mr. Melas and Paul Kratides in time. Marlowe does a good job of turning a reference to the difficulty of getting a warrant into a tense little scene with Gregson at the police station, and the translation scenes in Kemp and Latimer’s house are freaky for real. The actor playing Kemp appears to have a side job as a Peter Lorre impersonator; but derivative as it is, his performance also extremely unnerving and creepy. He really gets the laughing-while-saying-hideous-things part exactly right. The way Kemp and Latimer treat all three of the Greek people in this episode reminds me of the brutality of my own government regarding immigrants and “foreigners” of all types, which gives those scenes an extra dystopian shudder. 

I should also talk about how much I love the way they handle Holmes’s opening conversation with Watson about his brother. In the story as written, Mycroft comes up as part of a discussion about heredity. Doyle obviously believes in nature over nurture; many of the saga’s biggest and baddest villains (Moriarty, Magnussen, Roylott, Kemp) are described as products of bad breeding–or, as Doyle puts it in Kemp’s case, “the foulest antecedents.” One of Mycroft’s purposes is to confirm that intelligence is hereditary; only DNA could account for the birth of two such prodigies to the same parents. Now that Charles Murray is back in circulation on American college campuses, Doyle’s determinism seems even creepier to me than usual, so it’s a relief that in the adaptation, the focus is on Holmes’s finessing of the delicate business of revealing to Watson that in fact he’s not entirely alone in the world. He’s obviously nervous about it because he’s laid out a very careful plan of attack: bring Mycroft up in casual conversation, then see if Watson’s interested, and if he bites, then let him know Mycroft has a case for him and see if he wants to go. Holmes is obviously watching Watson for his reactions, and although he acts annoyed by Watson’s enthusiasm, he must secretly be thrilled by it. It’s a big deal, bringing the “intimate friend” to meet the family. 

So, you know, all that’s good. And then Watson discovers the Bradshaw, and the train chase begins.

Look, I like a good fanfic as much as the next woman, and one must acknowledge that “Greek Interpreter” is not an easy story to pad out to an hour. What happens on the train isn’t even all bad. Holmes & Holmes get to put their deduction skills to some practical use by identifying the baddies, and Mycroft gets to do something clever and daring. I also like the little touch where Holmes lets Latimer know who he’s dealing with not by introducing himself, but by using Watson’s name–because they’re now so inseparable in the public eye that to mention one is to unveil the other. So you know, I can sympathize with all this. 

But the whole thing just goes off the rails as soon as Latimer tries to make a break for it. First of all, Holmes basically kills Latimer. Latimer is the idiot who tries to escape from a moving train; but he’s hanging from the door, shouting for Sophia to help him, and Holmes deliberately physically prevents both Sophia and Watson from doing it. After Latimer falls to his death, Watson is, quite properly, horrified by Sherlock’s complicity. This isn’t just the collateral damage we saw in “Speckled Band” and “Copper Beeches;” this is vintage Dirty Harry-style vigilantism. And quite frankly, I hate that shit; but even people who don’t hate it like I do know enough to know that this is out of character.

So are Holmes’s frequent and increasingly bitter denunciations of Sophia’s own complicity in the murder of her brother. And this, let me just say, is ENTIRELY coming from Marlowe. In the story as written, everyone escapes; but a year or so later, they discover that Latimer and Kemp were found dead in Hungary, and Watson and Holmes assume that Sophia must have stabbed them. So in the story, Sophia may be in love with Latimer, but she DEFINITELY cares that Latimer and Kemp killed her brother, and she bides her time before exacting revenge. 

But in Marlowe’s adaptation, Holmes starts judging Sophia as soon as they get to the house. “One wonders,” he says, “with how little remorse” Sophia abandoned her brother to his fate. He’s even harsher with her in the train compartment. And when, after she’s led off in handcuffs into the mist, Watson asks what will become of her, Holmes says, “Nothing. It’s not a crime to have a cold heart without a single shred of compassion.” And then, for no reason, Watson walks off in the opposite direction so that Holmes can disappear into the mist, like the lonely, misogynistic, cynical hardboiled detective he has suddenly become.

How is any of this necessary? How is it excusable? The story doesn’t call for it; it’s completely inconsistent with the way Brett’s Holmes has so far treated the other women he’s interacted with on screen. It’s all of a piece with the gratuitous action and the killing of Latimer; and I just wonder why anyone thought they needed it. Had Marlowe read the canon stories? Had he seen any of the earlier episodes? Was he just so committed to Chandleresque atmosphere that he decided to give Holmes Philip Marlowe’s disgust for femmes fatales and really dames of all kinds? I don’t know. All I know is, that whole train sequence was a mistake and it shouldn’t have been made. One can only imagine Brett, who appears to have appointed himself guardian of the canon, reading the script and just facepalming when he got to that part. I have to SAY this shit? For real?

Ah well. Marlowe didn’t get his paws on “Norwood Builder,” which up next…and THAT one is about 99 44/100th percent pure delight.


	10. Company and Moral Support: THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not as warm and cuddly as “The Blue Carbuncle;” it’s not as creepy as “The Speckled Band.” But “Norwood Builder” has always been one of my favorites, and it’s because it marks, to me, a significant change in Holmes and Watson’s relationship. In ACD canon, the catalyst for this change is really the Return; “Norwood Builder” is the first story set and published after “The Empty House.” As I’ve said many times before, the stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes show us a Holmes/Watson relationship which is much more intimate, and much more central to both of their lives, than in earlier volumes. Hawkesworth seems to have wanted the whole first series to have that Return vibe. Accordingly, in the Granada narrative, “Norwood Builder” takes place three episodes before “The Final Problem” (we have “Resident Patient” and “The Red-Headed League” coming up first). And thanks to some great work from the screenwriter and from Brett and Burke, this becomes, not just an interesting case, but a beautiful moment in the development of Holmes and Watson’s relationship.

  * It’s not as warm and cuddly as “The Blue Carbuncle;” it’s not as creepy as “The Speckled Band.” But “Norwood Builder” has always been one of my favorites, and it’s because it marks, to me, a significant change in Holmes and Watson’s relationship. In ACD canon, the catalyst for this change is really the Return; “Norwood Builder” is the first story set and published after “The Empty House.” As I’ve said many times before, the stories in  _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_  show us a Holmes/Watson relationship which is much more intimate, and much more central to both of their lives, than in earlier volumes. Hawkesworth seems to have wanted the whole first series to have that  _Return_  vibe.  Accordingly, in the Granada narrative, “Norwood Builder” takes place three episodes before “The Final Problem” (we have “Resident Patient” and “The Red-Headed League” coming up first). And thanks to some great work from the screenwriter and from Brett and Burke, this becomes, not just an interesting case, but a beautiful moment in the development of Holmes and Watson’s relationship.

BTW, in the discussion below I’m going to assume that Holmes and Watson are partners (in life as in the detective business) and that the show only left that coded because it was 1984-5. If that bothers you, bail now. (I imagine that anyone bothered by this has in fact already bailed; but you’ve been warned.) 

When I think about what my adolescent role models for romance were, I always go back to  _Jane Eyre_. And yet, if I look at my own romantic life, it doesn’t look a whole lot like  _Jane Eyre._ I got into Sherlock Holmes at around the same time, and the Granada series aired on PBS sometime during my teenage years; and honestly, when I watch “Norwood Builder,” I recognize more of myself and my relationship in it than I do in  _Jane Eyre_. And this little scene here, in which Watson comes downstairs for breakfast and finds Holmes staring despondently into space, is kind of a touchstone for me. 

Though this was never explicitly stated and though I wouldn’t have put it to myself this way at the time, this was the first same-sex relationship I’d ever seen explored on TV. And here you have one man taking care of another, quietly, during one of the thousands of little crises that you and your partner, whoever you may be, will inevitably live through over ten or twenty or thirty years. Later adaptations–the Robert Downey Jr. films,  _Sherlock, Elementary_ –would blow up moments like this into melodrama by exaggerating Holmes’s addictions and turning his housekeeping quirks into epic dysfunctions. With a Holmes who’s that self-destructive, Watson’s nurturing becomes self-denial, and the relationship becomes an opera of codependency. But this scene is presented as just one among many moments in a relationship long and deep enough to encompass much more than what we can see from our voyeuristic position. And so I appreciate the way Watson just sits down, pours Holmes some tea, gently pushes it at him, and says, let’s go down to Norwood and see what we can do. And it’s such a poignant and heartstrings-playing moment when Holmes looks back at him and says, “I feel I shall need your company, and your moral support, today.”

This conversation felt so natural to me that I went back to look at the Doyle story because I suspected it was a modern invention. In fact, everything in this scene comes out of the canon story in one way or another–either from Watson’s narration (in which he notes that Holmes routinely went without food when hot on a case) or the dialogue, which has been slightly massaged in order to give Watson a slightly more active role. The “let’s go see what we can do” line, for instance, was taken out of one of Holmes’s speeches and given to Watson. And just by making those small changes, Harris turns this scene into one of the best glimpses we get of the heart of this relationship. 

The entire adaptation is like that. Harris firmly grasped the two principles that really made Granada’s adaptations stand out: 1) all the changes you make should come out of canon and 2) everything’s better with more Watson. There’s another great moment, for instance, when Watson volunteers to look through Oldacre’s papers and see if they can learn something from the state of his financial affairs, and Holmes gratefully accepts the help. In the canon story, Holmes does this all himself. By giving this job to Watson, Harris isn’t just finding the poor man something to do; he’s letting Watson show Holmes that he doesn’t have to do it all himself, and giving Holmes a chance to appreciate that. He’s also setting up a moment of pure joy later on when Watson comes running out to tell him what he’s found. Watson’s so happy to have some good news for him, and Holmes is so happy to get it, and it’s just a wonderful moment for both of them. Watson gets to present that part of the case to Lestrade in the final wrap-up. It continues the apprenticeship story established in “Dancing Men;” but in this particular story, it also deepens the relationship. That’s good adapting. Are you listening to me, Derek Marlowe?

Another bit of good adapting is the explanation of the body in the fire. This fixes a problem with canon–I know they didn’t have forensic anthropologists back then, but could Scotland Yard REALLY have been faked out “with a dead dog or rabbits”?–with something suggested but never followed up in canon. When he’s trying to come up with an alternative theory that would explain Lestrade’s evidence, he says, well, suppose a tramp was passing by, saw what was going on, snuck in thinking he could steal something valuable, and then brained Oldacre. This isn’t much of a theory in canon, but Harris turns it into its own little B-plot by giving the tramp an identity and making him Oldacre’s victim instead of his murderer. This allows Holmes to do one of the disguise things he loves so much; and it also actually verifies  _Sherlock’_ s Irene Adler’s theory that disguise is always a self-portrait. Huddled up despondently in his blankets by the fire, drinking tea out of a cracked cup, and responding submissively whenever the sailor he’s talking to bares his teeth, Holmes is re-enacting the misery of his morning funk, only without Watson’s company and moral support.

This brings me to the way Holmes relates to Lestrade in this episode, which is noticeably more prickly than even in the original story. Brett keeps the character fresh by painting with a different emotional palette in each new episode. Here, he’s nervous, anxious, and irritable from the moment Lestrade shows up. It REALLY bothers him that he is now dependent on Lestrade’s permission to speak to his client or to visit the crime scene. He’s painfully aware, in a way that he hasn’t shown us before, of how much more material power Lestrade has than he does. Whether McFarlane is guilty or not, Lestrade can get him hanged with what Oldacre’s given him, and Lestrade certainly seems determined to do so. With them actually working at cross purposes, Holmes has to confront the limitations of his ‘consulting’ position in a new way, and he hates it. Even more does he hate the fact that “all the facts are one way, and all my instincts the other.” This is a story where Holmes, up to a certain point, has to trust his gut–and he’s desperately uncomfortable in that position. Brett brings all of this through beautifully, and turns something that in the story is more of a friendly competition into a kind of existential crisis: can I really go up against the police and beat them? Can they, just by virtue of being The Police, defeat me even if I have logic and instinct and intelligence on my side? Does the way the facts themselves seem to be obeying Lestrade’s hypothesis mean that I am actually on the wrong side of this one–that I am wrong to be always seeing solutions that the official police don’t perceive or acknowledge, not only now, but maybe frequently? Maybe almost always?

So you can’t begrudge him a little drama at the end, once he’s figured out what’s really going on–although I do think there is evidence accumulating here to support the theory that Holmes is a bit of a pyromaniac. But here again, this is one of my favorite Brett moments. Holmes, as the director of this ad hoc amateur theatrical company, is so very disappointed by his cast after the first very half-assed shout of fire. “We can do better than that,” he says, stabbing them all to the heart with his disappointment; and they do. And out comes Oldacre, and Lestrade is flabbergasted. 

The episode ends with McFarlane and his mother at home, playing a version of the Granada theme on the piano. The loving teamwork of these two men has saved this poor child from Oldacre’s possessive, vindictive, malicious and destructive abuse of heterosexuality. Harris brings Watson in on the interview with McFarlane’s mother, which means that we get Watson’s reaction when she shows him the defaced photograph, and it is gratifyingly intense. After “Solitary Cyclist,” after “Speckled Band,” and after “Copper Beeches,” Watson has developed an instinctive recognition of toxic masculinity and a healthy revulsion and loathing of it. He’s learning; Holmes is learning. And I was learning, too: that two people of the same gender could make a good team, could become each other’s mainstay and support, could entwine their lives without losing their identities, and could use the camaraderie and the happiness that their love enabled to help other people. So this was an important episode, for me; and it was great to get to revisit it.





	11. Resident Evil: THE ADVENTURE OF THE RESIDENT PATIENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really tried very hard to go into this episode with an open mind, even though I knew it was written by Derek Marlowe, the man who thought it was a good idea to end “The Greek Interpreter” with a 20-minute chase scene on a train. I was excited for it, even, because I had never actually seen it before–which surprised me, because I really thought I’d seen all of the Brett and Burke episodes. Imagine my joy when I discovered there was a whole new one that was as yet unknown to me! Even if it was written by Derek Marlowe!
> 
> Short story: I was disappointed.
> 
> Longer story behind the cut tag: I was very disappointed, and I will tell you why.

  * I don’t normally post two reviews in one day; but this isn’t going to take long.

I really tried very hard to go into this episode with an open mind, even though I knew it was written by Derek Marlowe, the man who thought it was a good idea to end “The Greek Interpreter” with a 20-minute chase scene on a train. I was excited for it, even, because I had never actually seen it before–which surprised me, because I really thought I’d seen all of the Brett and Burke episodes. Imagine my joy when I discovered there was a whole new one that was as yet unknown to me! Even if it was written by Derek Marlowe!

Short story: I was disappointed.

Longer story behind the cut tag: I was very disappointed, and I will tell you why.

Now it’s entirely possible that one of the reasons I didn’t like this episode better is that I have no fond memories of it to give it the kind of nostalgic glow that suffuses the other episodes, and which helps you overlook some of the production problems. But leaving that aside for a moment…

When you’re going through the run of a TV show, you notice–at least I noted this when rewatching  _Star Trek_  TOS–that every once in a while (or, in the case of the second half of season 3 of  _Star Trek_  TOS, pretty much most of the time) you run into an episode that just feels unloved. It’s hard to say exactly what gives it away. A certain lack of investment on the part of the actors, perhaps; little lags and pauses dragging down the pacing; clumsily inserted reactions; or just shots like this one, which plunks Holmes into the middle of a tonally muddled, uncomposed mess of bedsheets and antique furniture with nary a thought spared for visual impact. But somehow, you just get the feeling that nobody really took this episode to heart and pledged to do their best for it. They got through it, put it in the can, and moved on.

That’s how I felt about “The Resident Patient.” Marlowe restricts himself to canon in this one–at least more so than in “Greek Interpreter”–but it feels like this was not so much out of respect as just that he couldn’t be bothered. Trevelyan’s voiceover is used to convey things that direct action could have made more interesting. There’s absolutely no attempt to individuate the members of the Worthington bank gang; instead of writing some dialogue for the ‘trial’ of Blessington/Sutton, which might have given us more of an interest in the outcome, Marlowe focuses on the horror of the actual killing. The flashback to the bank robbery honestly looks as if they did the first take without rehearsal, then said fuck it, let’s keep it. The extra playing the bank guy who gets shot isn’t even really trying. 

There are only two things that Marlowe and/or the director seem to have been really interested in this episode. One is the opening scene showing Sutton’s nightmare about death, and the other is the almost-silent scene in which Holmes goes over the crime scene collecting evidence. As for the first of these…well, it’s different. Cheesy and very 80s…but different. The second one is legitimately compelling and a good showcase for Brett’s abilities (although not necessarily for the cinematographer’s). But it’s really not enough to sustain an hour of television.

Marlowe pads the thing out with some Holmes & Watson stuff which is cute enough, but which failed to reach me for reasons I couldn’t at first understand. The scene where Holmes is looking frantically for the clipping on the Worthington bank robbery is pretty good. The opening conversation in the barbershop has its moments. You’d think I’d have grooved more on the closing back-and-forth over Holmes’s violin practicing and the title for the story. And yet I found myself not grooving on it. 

And then I realized: the Holmes/Watson stuff in this episode is what you might call roommate comedy. These are basically sitcom-level interactions based on an “odd couple” dynamic: two people who really shouldn’t get along, and bicker a lot for that reason, but at the end of the day really are friends. The only bit of it that rises above that level is the conversation at the barbershop at the beginning (and the two of them walking arm in arm back to the flat afterward). It’s sort of funny, but it doesn’t…I don’t know, it fails to convince me that it’s Holmes and Watson–this particular Holmes and Watson–and not some other odd couple. 

The only thing really interesting to me about this one, in fact, is the number of references to it that  _Sherlock_  seems to have made. Watson’s misinterpretation of Holmes tapping out the rhythm of the violin piece they just heard shows up in “The Reichenbach Fall,” when Sherlock mistakenly thinks that Moriarty is tapping out the key code when it’s really Bach partita #1. The shlocky yet surreal opening segment kind of reminded a bit of the opening of “The Final Problem.” The byplay about Watson’s titles shows up again in John and Sherlock’s banter about John’s blog and why a story needs a title. There is also a mannequin dangling from the ceiling for one of the consultations in…is it “Hounds of Baskerville?“ I forget. I knew Moffat and Gatiss had to be Granada aficionados because there was so much aggressive Granada homaging in “The Abominable Bride.” Not really sure what to make of their evident special fondness for this particular episode, though.

Anyway, I’ve seen it, and been underwhelmed by it, and on we go to “The Redheaded League.”





	12. The Penultimate Problem: THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Below the cut tag I’m going to talk mainly about the consequences of using “The Red Headed League” as a vehicle for introducing Moriarty. And also, of course, the many delightful moments it provides for our next-to-last look at the Brett and Burke team.

Doyle invented Moriarty for the specific purpose of killing Holmes off. Moriarty plays no role in the saga as written prior to “The Final Problem.” The fact that this criminal mastermind had never come up in any of their past cases immediately struck fans as ridiculous, and it was in fact retconned by Doyle himself in  _The Valley of Fear_. Most TV and film adaptations cater to contemporary expectations by building up to Moriarty more gradually. I can understand why “Red Headed League” seemed like a good place to do that. The ruse Clay sets up as a cover for his tunneling is so elaborate that it is really hard to see how he could have done it without some outside help. Nevertheless, “Red Headed League” is a very early story–it appears right after “Scandal in Bohemia” in  _Adventures_ , though it was obviously written after “A Case of Identity”–and moving it to this point in the arc creates some weirdness. As written, “Red Headed League” is basically a comic story with some action thrown in at the end. The Granada episode, by introducing Moriarty, adds a kind of gravity to this story that it was never designed to bear.

Below the cut tag I’m going to talk mainly about the consequences of using “The Red Headed League” as a vehicle for introducing Moriarty. And also, of course, the many delightful moments it provides for our next-to-last look at the Brett and Burke team.

There are numerous nifty moments in “The Red Headed League,” but the mature me has a better appreciation for this one now than I did in my youth:

We see here a callback to the chalkboard in “Dancing Men,” the episode which, in the Granada arc, [begins Watson’s apprenticeship as a detective](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/159015494979/the-end-of-stupid-watson-granada-holmes-the). In “Dancing Men,” it was Holmes drawing on the board and Watson studying it; here, it’s Watson drawing the layout of the bank and its environs on the board, with Holmes studying it. Someone put some thought into creating this nice little bookend for the apprenticeship narrative. Even more nifty is the fact that we get to this scene via a dissolve from this:

to this:

That’s Moriarty’s hand up top; he’s studying a map of Saxe-Coburg square because he’s the mastermind behind the bank job that the Red-Headed League is a cover for. And that hand down below is Watson’s, drawing a map of the same location on the 221B chalkboard.

This seems huge to me. It could just as easily have been Holmes drawing that map, and in any other adaptation it would be. The reading of Moriarty as Holmes’s evil twin/shadow self/doppleganger is encouraged so strongly by the canon story that it is continually replicated in adaptation (though  _Sherlock_ ’s take on this is, characteristically, freakier). This means visual parallels between Moriarty and Sherlock are an adaptation cliche (again,  _Sherlock_ makes them freakier). It’s surprising to see such a self-conscious parallel created between Moriarty and Watson. Holmes, of course, is right behind him; and Watson is very clearly using methods he’s seen Holmes use. But, following the “everything’s better with more Watson” rule I spoke of re “Norwood Builder,” this episode interpolates Watson into the Holmes/Moriarty dynamic from the beginning. For instance, when Holmes starts talking about Moriarty down in the bank vault, Watson says, “Moriarty,” in a tone which leaves no doubt that he understands exactly who Moriarty is and what kind of threat he poses to Holmes. By contrast, when Holmes mentions Moriarty in the ACD canon “Final Problem,” Watson says he’s never heard of him. This episode seems to want us to see  _both_  Watson and Holmes as Moriarty’s adversarial doubles. 

But this is not followed through much in the rest of this episode. It’s mainly preparing us for what happens in the next episode–the tragic irony of Watson “applying” Holmes’s methods one last time as he reads, on the fatal ledge above the Reichenbach Falls, the story of Holmes’s final contest with Moriarty. What we get here, instead, is a return to the earlier, more carefree days of the partnership. On the one hand, it’s a little jarring, in that “Red Headed League” has Watson saying and doing things that don’t make a lot of sense at this point in the Granada arc, such as apologizing and backing out when he sees Holmes with a client, or delivering exposition that none of the viewers need at this point. On the other hand, it’s nice of them to give us that freshness and energy one last time before things get funereal in “The Final Problem.” I’m particularly fond of the way Holmes, as he sees Watson withdrawing, races for the door, vaults over the back of the couch (or settee or whatever it is), and drags him back in. My daughter treats our couch in exactly the same manner when it gets in her way. At the outset of the case, they seem to be in the giddy infatuation phase of the partnership, trying to suppress their joint mirth while Jabez Wilson tells his story, and getting each other enraptured over the prospect of their trip to violinland. (I love how Watson looks over at Holmes sitting there with his eyes closed half-singing along…he has this expression on his face which I can only read as “Jesus, Holmes, tag your porn.”) Watson’s little speech to Holmes about how he saw more than Watson saw is, at this point in the arc, kind of redundant; but in a way it also works: with all the progress Watson has made, Holmes is still so far ahead he can’t imagine ever getting there. I also love the moment at which, after the bank manager starts getting shirty about amateur detectives, Watson very politely tears him a new one. 

So I can sort of get down with the anachronisms and the tonal contrasts created by crossing “Red Headed League” with “Final Problem.” In some ways, the forced union of these two plots works less well. Athelney Jones’s role in all this, for instance, is pretty incoherent. Holmes refers to him as “an absolute imbecile in his profession,” which based on Jones’s role in  _Sign of Four_  is completely accurate; but Jones doesn’t act that way at all once they’re actually on the stakeout, because someone has to help Holmes do the exposition about Moriarty and that person can’t be such an imbecile that he hasn’t heard of Moriarty or doesn’t believe in him. But it is cool to see “Duncan Ross,” who’s very funny in a very understated way in his interactions with Jabez Wilson, reporting to Moriarty sans wig and eyebrows and deadly serious. (I also just appreciate in a meta sense the fact that “Ross” complains about people using wigs and paint to cheat, because Granada Holmes does the same; there are so, so, so many really bad wigs on this show, to say nothing of whiskers and moustaches that are clearly stuck on with spirit gum.) 

Let me also say how much I love it that the fake name “Ross” gives to the lawyer he’s subletting from is “William Morris.” This is something I only figured out on repeated reading, but many of the pre-Reichenbach stories indirectly represent the massive poverty and unemployment rampant in 1890s London–but usually represent it as somehow fraudulent or not real. There’s the journalist who pretends to be an unemployable panhandler in “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” the gang of ‘idle’ ruffians who pretend to get into a fight over the right to earn a copper by opening Irene Adler’s carriage door, and now this building full of desperate red-headed men hoping against hope to get a job where they can make four pounds a year. William Morris, one of England’s great writer/radicals, devoted much of his career to addressing this crisis. All he got in return–from Doyle, at any rate–was this rather cheeky cameo.

It’s striking how Watson’s final comment on Holmes as a “benefactor of the race” works just as well as an introduction to his character for new readers as it does as a kind of summation of Holmes just before his death. Holmes discharges his benefactor function in several ways in this episode, the main one being extorting money out of the asshole banker for both himself and Watson and for Jabez Wilson, whose pawnshop gets destroyed during the melee. Brett’s performance has so much flash and sparkle and surface variation; but the foundation’s always the same. And it reminds us in advance of what we’re about to lose.


	13. The Perennial Problem: THE FINAL PROBLEM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Young Plaidder, the big loss after “The Final Problem” was not Holmes–who everyone always knows now is coming back–but Watson. When the series resumed after the hiatus, Burke was unavailable, and Edward Hardwicke was cast as Watson. I don’t yet know how Brett handled the transition; but Young Plaidder could not. I am loyal by nature, and once I get attached to an actor, I find it hard to let go. 
> 
> Anyway, Cranky Old Plaidder is capable of critical distance at this point, and so in re-watching “The Final Problem” I had a weird kind of double consciousness about it. Young Plaidder is still in there somewhere, basically just crying. Cranky Old Plaidder can’t help thinking about “The Final Problem” as a perennial problem for adapters.

  * And here we go. The end of Brett and Burke, and the end of my adolescent Granada experience. No longer will these write-ups be infested with irrelevant detail about my younger self, the ardent and idealistic Young Plaidder who watched these in the first bloom of her womanhood, blissfully unaware as yet of homophobia, institutional racism, the deep cynicism of American foreign policy, the Internet, reality television, gynecological cancers, and exactly how stupid a Repubican president could become. For Young Plaidder, the big loss after “The Final Problem” was not Holmes–who everyone always knows now is coming back–but Watson. When the series resumed after the hiatus, Burke was unavailable, and Edward Hardwicke was cast as Watson. I don’t yet know how Brett handled the transition; but Young Plaidder could not. I am loyal by nature, and once I get attached to an actor, I find it hard to let go. 

Anyway, Cranky Old Plaidder is capable of critical distance at this point, and so in re-watching “The Final Problem” I had a weird kind of double consciousness about it. Young Plaidder is still in there somewhere, basically just crying. Cranky Old Plaidder can’t help thinking about “The Final Problem” as a perennial problem for adapters. There are so many problems with the original story to start with; and then when you bring it to screen, you have to deal with the problem of outsize emotions felt by two characters who are, despite their obviously strong feelings for each other, still bound in their interactions by a strange formality. Right to the bitter end of the saga, for instance, neither ever uses the other’s first name in front of the reader. This gave rise, back in the day, to a hotly contested debate about whether, in H/W slash, they should address each other by first names or stick to Holmes and Watson. I don’t know whether people are still fighting this battle now. But I digress. My point is: with something like  _Sherlock_ , with its twenty-first century setting, you can dispense with all that–or with something like the Robert J. Downey films, where the setting is nominally Victorian but the production is so clearly post- _Moulin Rouge_  that anachronism is just part of the aesthetic. Granada’s mission was to be faithful to canon; and “The Final Problem” is just always going to test that faith. Hawkesworth evidently understood the dangers, because he dramatized both this one and “The Red Headed League” himself. Like most fans, he tries to fix it. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. But one thing it does get right, consistently, is the note of DOOM sounded in the title. From the very beginning, this episode is about Holmes being hunted down by inexorable death; and although the production may go a teensy bit over the top with that, Brett makes Holmes’s journey from terror to acceptance very effective. And although, as I will discuss below, this episode does identify some of David Burke’s limitations as an actor, ultimately I have to say that we do feel Watson’s grief; and I’m going to miss David Burke all over again.

So let me just go over the Perennial Problems of The Final Problem, and Hawkesworth’s attempts to fix them:

**1) The very sketchy portrait the story gives us of this supposed criminal mastermind.** We’re told all kinds of dire things about him, but we don’t know much about the specifics of what he actually does. Holmes’s plan to entrap him is similarly left up to the imagination; we don’t know why he has to wait until Monday to make his final move–especially since Moriarty evidently knows what he’s planning already–or why he doesn’t have to be in England for the big round-up. 

Hawkesworth, I figure, was smart enough to know there was no way to actually show us any of that; to dramatize the story of how Holmes took down Moriarty’s gang you’d basically have to write your own feature-length film. What he does instead is give us a kind of micro-version of that story by creating the plot about the theft of the Mona Lisa. I have to say I’m not thrilled by this part of the episode. First of all, although stealing the Mona Lisa is certainly audacious, it suggests to me a certain lack of imagination–not so much on Moriarty’s part as on Hawkesworth’s. It was suggested, I suppose, by Holmes’s commentary on Moriarty’s suspiciously pricey private art collection in  _The Valley of Fear;_ but stealing world-famous public monuments is also a cliche supervillain thing to do. Moriarty stealing the Mona Lisa is basically the art theft equivalent of Gru stealing the moon. 

**2) The trip to the Continent.** Holmes fandom had not grown very old before people started pointing out that if Holmes really wanted to hide from Moriarty till it was all over, going on a jaunt with Watson was probably the dumbest way he could have done it. First of all, Watson is not as good at hiding as Holmes is. Second, what idiot does not know at this point that to find Holmes all you have to do is find Watson and wait? 

Now there is, to me, a very obvious reason that Doyle did this: he wanted Holmes to die in the Reichenbach Falls and he wanted Watson to be able to tell the story, and a holiday on the Continent was the fastest way he could think of to make that happen. Why the Reichenbach Falls? Well, you have to remember that the reason Doyle killed Holmes in the first place was that he wanted to be able to pursue his other writing, hopefully in more Literary and Prestigious directions. “The Final Problem” may have issues when it comes to plot, but Doyle was obviously concentrating primarily on providing Holmes with a grand exit worthy of his exalted status, and since the days of Byron and both Shelleys, for readers of English literature the Swiss alps had been the pinnacle, if you will, of the sublime. The Falls themselves are sufficiently dramatic, chaotic, and turbulent to be the resting place of someone who, as Holmes observes in “The Red Headed League,” spent his entire life trying to avoid stagnation and boredom. Watson’s description of the Falls reaches for a loftier tone than he usually aims for, and honestly I think contains ‘his’ best writing:

**“It is indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamor. We stood near the edge peering down at the gleam of the breaking water far below us against the black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss.”**

So my hypothesis is that Doyle picked out the gravesite first and then had to figure out how to get Holmes and Moriarty to it, and that explains Holmes’s apparently boneheaded decision to ‘escape’ Moriarty by eloping with Watson. But of course this is useless as fanon. Fandom’s ultimately goal, really, is to bury the author, because the impossible desire driving fandom is always to make the imaginary real. An ill-concealed authorial intervention like the continental holiday is obnoxious to fans because it reminds us that our favorite character is an artificial construct. So one of the earliest fan theories formulated was that the whole trip was an elaborate attempt on Holmes’s part to assassinate  _Moriarty_. The precautions he tells Watson to take, so the theory goes, are just enough to give the ruse some credibility; Holmes always intended Moriarty to follow him, and the trip draws him deeper and deeper into the wilderness, where it will be easier for Holmes to get to him. This seems too cold-blooded and calculating to me, so I’ve always opted for a simpler fan theory: Holmes knows he’s going to die, and he wants to spend his last days on holiday with Watson. That makes perfect sense to me.

Hawkesworth’s dramatization allows for you to choose either or both theories (they are not after all incompatible). Holmes does sincerely seem to be trying to shake Moriarty during the train journey (imagine: there was a time when you could just hire your own train). But there are two occasions when Holmes spots suspicious people who are obviously following them and lies to Watson about it. Maybe he doesn’t want Watson to worry about him; maybe he doesn’t want Watson to figure out that he’s trying to assassinate his arch-enemy. Either way, over the course of the trip, Holmes loses that hunted and haunted look he had back in London after the three assassination attempts. With every one of these near misses, he gets closer to being ready for his last bow.

The best scene from the Switzerland trip is the conversation after Holmes gets the note telling him Moriarty has escaped. Holmes tries to get Watson to go home, for his own safety. The canon story doesn’t report what Watson says in response, only that this “was hardly an appeal to be successful with one who was an old campaigner as well as an old friend.” Hawkesworth lets Watson articulate, to a limited extent, some of what’s compressed into that line: “I’m not leaving you, Holmes. Not unless you order me to go.” Holmes looks back at him; and he doesn’t give the order. Watson’s just dared Holmes to break up with him; Holmes has acknowledged that he can’t stand to do it. This situation is its own emotional maelstrom; but all we actually  _see_  is two men sitting on a bench in the open air.

**3\. Everyone now knows that Holmes doesn’t really die.** We can never read this story the way Doyle’s original fans did. We all know he came back and we all trust that he’s coming back. So the story can never have the impact on us that Doyle wanted it to have.

Hawkesworth deals with this the only way you really can: by forcing the viewer to share the  _characters’_ belief in Holmes’s impending, and then apparently actual, death. This approach certainly plays to Brett’s strengths; that scene in 221B after he climbs in through the window just breaks your heart for both him and Watson. His confrontation with Moriarty also showcases Brett’s signature blend of sensitivity and steel; Holmes can get through his performance of stoicism as long as he’s facing his adversary, but when Moriarty turns to go, we see him falter just for a minute, wrapping his gown around him nervously before delivering his parting shot. The production augments this by tingeing everything in the London phase of the episode with gloom, from the dirge-like arrangement of the opening theme to the visiting-card opening credits to the dim light and mist through which Holmes navigates as he dodges Moriarty’s hit men. 

Unfortunately, Hawkesworth decides to be a stickler for canon when it comes to Watson, which undoes some of the good work done in the earlier episodes. Watson, in “The Final Problem,” is more than usually obtuse. You can’t really do anything about the fact that he falls for the note from the hotel; that’s integral to the plot. But you don’t have to include the moment when Watson sees a lone figure dressed in black climbing the mountain toward where he left Holmes, but thinks nothing of it. Hawkesworth does; and he shouldn’t have. Granada Watson is really not that stupid.

I have to say that I found Burke’s performance of Watson’s discovery at the Falls disappointing. Burke’s biggest strength, all the way through, has been his enthusiasm and energy, and the sort of joyous wonder with which he regards Holmes’s triumphs. He and Brett were great banter-mates; and yet there was also always a protective tenderness there ready to come out when it was needed.When it comes to grief and shock, Burke seems to be a bit out of his comfort zone. One recognizes, for instance, the familiar signs of a director’s attempt to camouflage the fact that the actor can’t produce real tears on demand. Which, to be fair, is a fucking hard thing to do.

At the same time, it’s only fair to ask: what performance of that grief would NOT disappoint me? Stage grief is never much like real grief. When we say that stage grief is convincing, we mean it’s emotionally stimulating without being too obviously faked.  _Real_  grief is not pleasurable and it doesn’t look or sound like what viewers are used to. Martin Freeman, during Mary Morstan’s death scene in “The Six Thatchers,” tried to keep it real–and got mocked by fans for failing to follow convention. Speaking of Freeman, let me say that the effectiveness of his performance of in “The Reichenbach Fall” depends largely on the fact that John, in general, suppresses his emotions. Because he actually witnesses the “death,” John’s initial reaction is shock and disbelief, and that’s performed pretty full-bore. John’s actual grief, on the other hand, is repressed, so that we can _imagine_ its soul-shattering intensity instead of having to be disappointed by the inevitable failure of its expression. 

Hawkesworth and the production team find ways of compensating for all this, some of them surprisingly effective even after all this time   Having Watson shout “HOLMES!” into the cataract a few times is a little cheesy, but since I am an old X-Files fan and accustomed to the “SCULLAAAAAAY!!!”, it sort of got me anyway. But the real killer is the final scene in which Watson, back at 221B and surrounded by Holmes’s stuff, turns to the camera for the first time in the series and just tells us, directly, about the heavy heart with which he takes up his pen to record for the final time the singular gifts of Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know why that gets to me, but I’m sort of choking up even as I type this. We all identify with Watson, in our own love and loyalty for an impossible being who seems so real and yet never existed. Watson’s loss is a mirror for the loss we feel every time we’re reminded that Holmes isn’t real, that he never has been real. It’s unexpected, and yet strangely moving, for us to have that one moment of direct connection–as if Watson is reaching out to us for support. You knew him, he seems to be saying. You loved him too. You know what I’m going through.

As Watson’s voice goes on, the camera lingers on all the things Holmes has left behind, never (as far as Watson knows) to pick up again. The pipe and slippers, the cigarette case, the revolver, etc. The very last image focused on, right after the “best and wisest man” line, is the empty syringe, seen through the iconic magnifying glass.

 I wondered about that. I think there are basically two readings here: 

1) This is the equivalent of the final shot of Sherlock in the graveyard at the end of “The Reichenbach Fall,” in that is promises us that more narrative is coming. The addiction plot set up in the first four episodes has been largely dropped in the more recent ones, without any resolution; maybe this is a promise that Holmes will come back so we can do his recovery narrative.

2) When someone dies after a long illness, one of the strangest things is not having to worry about them any more. For weeks or months your entire life has been full of anxiety about how best to care for them; now, that anxiety is over. There is nothing more to do. That in itself is its own loss. Watson has been trying to get Holmes to stop it with the cocaine since “Scandal in Bohemia.” One imagines there were many conflicts about that behind the scenes. And here it is, the syringe that caused them so much trouble, and an empty cocaine bottle. Watson’s been battling it all these years, and it’s over. It can’t do Holmes any more harm. And in a way, that’s a more convincing proof of his death than Watson’s imagined scene of the two of them taking that long last fall down into the whirlpool. 

So for all its flaws, this episode is genuinely heartbreaking. I’m just going to leave it there for now. I’ll be interested to see how “The Empty House” responds to it…when I’m done crying into my Annotated Sherlock Holmes.





	14. This Is Indeed Like The Old Days: THE EMPTY HOUSE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The short story is: I miss ‘my’ Watson. But I’m willing to give the new guy a chance.

  


So, the first thing I did after watching “Empty House” was write up a thing comparing [the way “Empty House” handles the Reunion to the way Mark Gatiss handled it in “The Empty Hearse” on  _Sherlock_](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/159876245744/faints-and-feints-granada-empty-house-vs). I recommend it to the curious. But of course that’s not all there is to “The Empty House,” and that piece doesn’t take up the BIG question, asked by some of my loyal readers in response to [my writeup of “The Final Problem”](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/159722139519/the-perennial-problem-granada-holmes-the-final): can I handle the casting change? Will I be able to embrace Edward Hardwicke after decades in which–in my head–Burke was the only Watson on this show?

Beyond the cut tag I will take up this question, and also address the episode as a whole. The short story is: I miss ‘my’ Watson. Almost as much as this poor bastard in the above photo does at this moment. But I’m willing to give the new guy a chance.

So I was talking before about how many things are wrong with the canon “Final Problem.” The canon “Empty House,” really, in a lot of ways is even worse. Doyle wasn’t expecting to have to retcon “Final Problem,” and he didn’t leave himself that much wiggle room (though the fact that he killed Holmes in such a way that the body couldn’t be recovered does suggest to me that he had some unresolved ambivalence about killing off his cash cow). Others have pointed out that Holmes’s explanation for why he played dead for three years doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that the people he says he was trying to fool–i.e., Moran et al.–are exactly the people who knew he was alive all the time. There are other technical problems that bigger canon geeks than I geek out about–someone wrote an entire poem about the fact that it’s impossible to figure out where Moran would have shot Adair from–but the adaptation exposes one of the biggest, which is the wax dummy in the window of 221b. Holmes says he’s surprised that Moran fell for it, and by God so am I. Sure, the profile is perfect and Mrs. Hudson is moving it from time to time. But it’s also very obviously not alive. This is the kind of thing that becomes more obvious on film than it is in print. Doyle also doesn’t do a great job of making us care about the Adair murder for its own sake. Clearly the main business of the story is the Reunion, and the actual case is–if you will–window dressing.

Hawkesworth’s adaptation is, for me, a mixed bag. I think the smartest decision he made was to involve Watson more formally in the case. Having completed the apprenticeship narrative that runs from “Dancing Men” to “Final Problem,” Watson is now investigating things on his own, and has signed up to be a “police surgeon;” Lestrade apparently works with him from time to time, and calls him in to the Adair crime scene. This gives us a chance to find out a little more about Watson’s life without Holmes, and to introduce us to Hardwicke. The scene in which Watson gives evidence at the inquest is a great idea from that point of view. We see how, after producing Holmes’s celebrity, poor Watson himself has been forgotten, reduced to a nondescript man giving evidence to a testy coroner who won’t let him use his carefully honed deductive faculties and can’t even remember his name. Hardwicke seems very depressed by this interaction, and in general the mutedness of his performance fits very well with one’s idea of a Watson without Holmes. He’s doing his duty, getting through the day, still taking an interest in crime, but not really enjoying the full and exciting life he had with Holmes. The rest of the inquest, however, is very slow, very boring, and very full of unconvincing performances by bit players.

Combat, also, does not appear to have been a strength of the Granada team. The boxing scene in “Solitary Cyclist” is really the only point at which I’ve ever fully believed in Brett’s fight scenes. The new Fight on the Ledge makes it look as if “baritsu” is the Japanese art of kneeing your opponent in the nuts and then pushing him over while he’s screaming. It’s also unfathomable to me why anyone asked or allowed Brett to let out a giant “YAAAAAAAA!” while he pounces on Moran. 

While I’m at it, I’m just going to come out and say this: although it does make sense to do the switch during the hiatus, in other ways, introducing a new Watson is a much  _bigger_  problem in "Empty House” than it would have been in almost any other episode. There is the awkwardness of the Reichenbach reconstruction, for example, where Watson is shot from so far away you have no idea WHO’s playing him, and is also clearly not standing where Burke was during the corresponding scene in “Final Problem.” But it cannot be denied that the main problem is that it would just be more powerful for the viewer if the person who welcomed Holmes back were the person who had actually lost him. Chemistry between actors doesn’t happen overnight; it’s built up over time as they work together and begin to trust and rely on each other. Burke and Brett’s chemistry was cooking at a pretty good clip by the time they hit “Speckled Band.” All that went up the spout, and it can’t be recovered; it has to be rebuilt. It just isn’t there yet for Brett and Hardwicke. Hardwicke is also at a disadvantage in the reunion scene in that he doesn’t have an established character or an established relationship to draw on; he has to  _invent_  all of Watson’s emotions at a time when they’re supposed to be  _recurring_  after long suppression.

As regarding Hardwicke and Burke specifically…I find that the thing I miss most about Burke is his voice. Hardwicke is more soft-spoken and his voice doesn’t have…I don’t know…as much life and tonal variety as Burke’s does. Hardwicke also seems to be generally more understated, and although I can see possible payoffs for this further down the line, it does dampen the reunion scene a bit. One doesn’t feel the joy as much as one would if it were Burke. At least I don’t.

Here, however, I have to stop and say: regardless of all of this, the entire reunion scene is a treasure, and that is largely down to Brett, who turns in a solid gold performance. That sort of anxious yet cocky look on his face as he turns around to do that line about smoking in Watson’s consulting room…and then that smile as he stretches his arms out for Watson is every goddamn thing you ever wanted from the reunion and never bloody got from “The Empty Hearse.” He’s just so happy about finally having Watson back…and that makes that sad little scene with Holmes watching Watson ‘investigate’ at Reichenbach all the more heart-twisting. Let me just say, as a veteran of series 3 and 4 of  _Sherlock,_ how healing it is to watch Holmes and Watson genuinely reconnect, and to see the hurt and the remorse turn into forgiveness and rejoicing. This is the way it SHOULD be done, and only when you watch this scene can you really appreciate how fucking cruel to everyone involved the “Empty Hearse” reunion scene was. 

I may as well observe in passing that it really seems to me as if Hawkesworth is really pushing the envelope when it comes to coding this relationship. Hardwicke’s most animated moment comes after Holmes asks if he can crash on Watson’s examination table for a few hours, and Watson cries, “My BEDROOM is at your disposal!” This is not ACD canon. Neither is Holmes’s line about how he was so excited about the prospect of seeing Watson again that he couldn’t sleep. In canon, they just have dinner and spend the next three hours catching up. In this episode, Holmes falls asleep in Watson’s consulting room and Watson tenderly tucks a blanket around him. There’s also this weird little moment at the empty house when Holmes gets overexcited and yells “YOU’RE MY TIGER!” at Moran. Watson puts a hand on his shoulder, like, easy there tiger, and Holmes smacks it away in a state of high excitement. Makes you wonder what games they’re going to be playing back at 221b after the champagne is gone and Mrs. Hudson has retired.

(A+ for use of Mrs. Hudson in this episode, by the way.) 

 In the final scene in 221b, however, I felt like I was starting to warm up to Hardwicke. I mean I don’t know whose idea it was to put the poor man in a fez:

I mean what is the thinking here? Holmes has his own trademark funny hat, so Watson needs one too? Or did everyone in Victorian London don fezzes for celebrations? Whatever the thought process was, I feel about this fez the way River Song felt about Eleven’s:

[Originally posted by space-and-time-in-the-tardis](https://tmblr.co/Z7lO0k1syQzib)

However, I find his exposition of Moran’s motive, which Hawkesworth has generously transferred from Holmes to Watson, quite charming–in part because Holmes is so genuinely pleased and (I believe) kind of turned on by Watson’s deductive stylings. So although I still grieve for the Brett/Burke Reunion That Wasn’t, I am on board with the Brett/Hardwicke team for further adventures. Just please, for the love of God, keep the combat scenes to a minimum.


	15. Gentle Man of the Jury: THE ABBEY GRANGE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed “Abbey Grange,” partly because of the interesting choices made by Trevor Bowen in the adaptation. In addition to following the Everything’s Better With More Watson rule most admirably, Bowen makes some changes regarding Holmes’s interactions with Lady Brackenstall. Bowen seems to have conceived of Lady Brackenstall (nee Mary Fraser) as the protagonist, and he spends a lot of time developing her and dramatizing her backstory. In the process, he generates some really interesting new material for Watson. And since I just had the experience of contrasting the Granada return with the Sherlock return, I could not help think of this adaptation as a really interesting example of how you can center a heterosexual relationship and a female character in a narrative without abjecting the queer characters who share it. Which is a thing that some more modern adapters have abjectly failed to do, naming no Moffats or Gatisses. In “Abbey Grange,” the fact that Holmes winds up playing fairy godmother to a different Mary and a different John (no lie, that is the name that “Jack” is a diminutive of) in no way erodes his own autonomy and dignity, and ultimately both strengthens and complicates his bond with Watson.

  * The indefatigable antikythera42 tells me that “Abbey Grange” was actually filmed before “Empty House,” to give Hardwicke and Brett time to establish an on-screen relationship before diving into the Big Feels. Strangely, I find that I enjoyed both Hardwicke’s performance and their chemistry better in “Abbey Grange” than I did in “Empty House.” The lesson here, maybe, is that the Fall/Return episodes are just harder on the Watson; as I said in my review of “Final Problem,” Burke’s performance in that one isn’t uniformly convincing either. Or, maybe I just need an episode to warm up to the new guy.

However it may be, I really enjoyed “Abbey Grange,” partly because of the interesting choices made by Trevor Bowen in the adaptation. In addition to following the Everything’s Better With More Watson rule most admirably, Bowen makes some changes regarding Holmes’s interactions with Lady Brackenstall. Bowen seems to have conceived of Lady Brackenstall (nee Mary Fraser) as the protagonist, and he spends a lot of time developing her and dramatizing her backstory. In the process, he generates some really interesting new material for Watson. And since I just had the experience of contrasting the Granada return with the  _Sherlock_  return, I could not help think of this adaptation as a really interesting example of how you can center a heterosexual relationship and a female character in a narrative without abjecting the queer characters who share it. Which is a thing that some more modern adapters have abjectly failed to do, naming no Moffats or Gatisses. In “Abbey Grange,” the fact that Holmes winds up playing fairy godmother to a different Mary and a different John (no lie, that is the name that “Jack” is a diminutive of) in no way erodes his own autonomy and dignity, and ultimately both strengthens and complicates his bond with Watson. 

First of all, let me give props where they are due: they were really making an effort with the production values on this one. Someone’s tried to make the cinematography visually interesting and thematically appropriate–I don’t know how cool that horse-cam really is, but points for giving us multiple points of view–and the locations are beautiful. They also seem to be working harder on making the corpses look deader. Oddly, the 221b interiors seem weird to me–maybe they weren’t able to recreate the old set for some reason, or maybe they decided to give it a makeover–but overall, this is a cut above.

I particularly appreciate the use of close-ups in the initial interview with Lady Brackenstall; and here is where we start to see the impact of the adaptation. During the Hiatus, in 1897, Doyle fell in love with a woman named Jean Leckie. He was, evidently, unable to divorce his current wife, and they postponed their marriage (and, if you believe all you read, their consummation) until after his wife died in 1906. As a result, starting with the  _Return_  stories, you start to see a lot of plots involving characters who are trapped in disastrous marriages that they can’t get out of, who are sometimes given the opportunity to vent about how unjust this is. That’s what happens during Lady Brackenstall’s interview in ACD’s “Abbey Grange,” where her story about her marriage is quite simple: my husband was a monster, my marriage was a nightmare, someday God will change the laws of England so people can exit their marriages at will and then  ~~Arthur can finally marry Jean wait no strike that~~. Holmes believes all of it, is extremely impressed by her bravery and candor, and only starts to question her account once he examines the crime scene afterward.

Bowen eliminates Doyle’s grandstanding and instead has Lady Brackenstall invent a much more complex account of her marriage which is more sympathetic both to Sir Eustace and to alcoholism in general. And here is where you start to feel like the Hawkesworth series is now starting to develop its own, semi-independent continuity. As in “Speckled Band,” Holmes notices the signs of abuse on Lady Brackenstall’s arm; but in canon, after she dismisses them as unrelated, he continues to assume that everything she’s telling him is true. As I’ve argued before, the Granada adaptations of “Speckled Band” and “Copper Beeches” provide some evidence that the Granada team was interpreting these stories through a more contemporary understanding of domestic violence and sexual abuse. The same thing seems to be happening with “Abbey Grange,” and you can see this most clearly in the reaction shots of Holmes and Watson while Lady Brackenstall tells her story. For one thing, it’s clear that Holmes never believes Lady Brackenstall’s account of her alcoholic husband for an instant. He’s drawn his own conclusions based on the hatpin stab wounds and the way she frames the story. He’s pretty sure that she’s minimizing both his drinking and his abuse of her from the beginning. When Watson compliments her on the “compassion” of her narrative, they have an Exchange of Glances which is priceless: Watson looks over at Holmes with an approving smile, and Holmes looks back at him with barely-disguised astonishment and disappointment, before returning to Lady Brackenstall and listening to her narrative with cynical skepticism. 

All this means, unfortunately, that we lose something I always thought was really cool about the original story, which is Holmes explaining to Watson how his preconceptions about Lady Brackenstall colored his perceptions and led him to misinterpret or dismiss evidence that went against the narrative. Where ACD canon Holmes is bothered, after he leaves, by a nagging feeling that something’s wrong with the evidence, the impression created in the adaptation is that he’s already concluded that the whole scenario is fishy and the question he’s really debating is not, did Lady Brackenstall collude in covering up the murder of her husband, but will he or won’t he let her get away with it. In the adaptation this is considerably compressed–he and Watson have the conversation about those three damn wine glasses, of which perhaps more later, but that’s all–and Holmes’s second visit to the scene is expanded to include the discovery of the episode’s _other_  murder: Sir Eustace’s immolation of Lady Brackenstall’s dog. I applaud the principle behind this addition even though the execution could have been better (the dog should not have been named “Fudge,” the name tag is obviously both modern and brand-shiny-new, and the tombstone’s placement is inexplicable): this incident is mentioned in passing in the canon story, but incorporating it into the investigation helps confirm for the audience what Holmes already suspects about the Brackenstalls’ marriage. (It is no one’s fault that this bit now reminds me of the exhumation of Mr. Tippy in the classic  _X-Files_  episode “Syzygy.”) 

So in contrast to the hit job that Derek Marlowe does on Sophia Kratides in “Greek Interpreter,” Bowen’s adaptation recuperates Lady Brackenstall by providing context for Holmes’s accusations when he goes back to confront her. In the canon story, the emphasis is on Holmes’s learning not to be swayed by rank, beauty, charm, chivalry, etc. when evaluating a suspect’s credibility, and the confrontation is mainly about him defending “any reputation I might possess” against a woman who nearly played him for a fool. In the adaptation, the emphasis is on a different aspect of that scene: look, I know why you lied to me, and I know how desperate you are; please tell me the truth so I can help you. Here, as in the later scene with Captain Crocker, Holmes is frustrated by the way she keeps making that difficult; he  _wants_  to be on her side, but unless she tells him the truth, he can’t be.

This, by the way, is a feature of Holmes as detective that will become very important for the genre. As we already know from “Blue Carbuncle,” Holmes’s #1 goal is not necessarily to punish the wrongdoer. Holmes is willing to, as he says later on in the story, “play tricks with the law of England” in order to get the result he thinks is best. The one constant is that he needs to know the truth–and that in order to secure Holmes’s sympathy or assistance, the suspect  _has to confess it_. Obviously there are narrative reasons for this quirk of his; but I think it’s worth pointing out that from the beginning, the mystery matters more than the crime and the truth matters more than punishment. Over and above that, though, Holmes always insists on people being honest  _with him_ before he’ll help them, whether it’s the King of Bohemia or Leon Sterndale. The Victorians idealized personal honesty–Heroes and Heroines were supposed to Never Tell A Lie–and so for him to accuse Lady Brackenstall of lying to him is a big deal. But, as we’ve already seen, Doyle was well aware of some of the things that people in the upper classes routinely lied about, domestic violence being one of them. Lady Brackenstall’s refusal to come clean doesn’t prevent the canon Holmes from helping her, but it does end his interaction with her; in the canon story, he walks away and never sees her again.

The adaptation brings her back; and this brings is to the Captain Crocker part of the episode. Naturally, Bowen decides to stage some of their romance, in order to give us a proper appreciation of his excellent qualities. Naturally, also, they stage his battle with Sir Eustace, which…I mean did I not BEG you, Granada, to keep the fight scenes to a minimum? Was all that jumping up on the dining room table NECESSARY? I’m not as easily moved by heterosexual romance as I once was, but they do a fine job with that part of it. I was more taken by their dramatization of Holmes’s visit to the shipping company’s office, where what could have been some more boring-ass exposition is turned into kind of a charming little vignette in which Holmes copes with the useful but rather annoying fact that the shipping clerk guy is a huge Sherlock Holmes fanboy. Holmes is already worrying about what he’s going to do with the information he’s about to get (this is rather crudely telegraphed by Holmes toying with a chess set sitting out in the shipping office) and has no time for the clerk’s fanning or Watson’s appreciation of it. These little touches make a lot of difference to the feel of the final product.

Most interesting to me, however, is how this episode handles the confrontation with Crocker. It plays out according to canon (with some emendations to some of the now-embarrassing dialogue) for a while…and then Mary shows up. 

So what up to that point was an interestingly tense man-to-man confrontation–how can you not love Holmes promising to “crush” the hot sailor he’s nose to nose with–becomes the happy ending of a heterosexual romance, in which Holmes plays matchmaker. Possibly my favorite moment comes after Crocker refuses the gift of freedom for the second time, on the grounds that someone else might swing for the crime. Holmes turns around, and what he says is perfectly measured and reasonable, and yet his whole body is shouting “YOU IDIOT, will you stop being noble and let me HELP YOU!!”

And then, after he says “Come back to this lady in one year’s time,” something very interesting happens. Mary rushes up to Holmes and gives him a hug…and he could NOT be more physically uncomfortable with that. I mean I found a gif of it:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt25UNAyE)

…but it doesn’t go on long enough to show him getting even more uncomfortable, trying to withdraw from her as far as possible, and then sort of peeling her arm off him and stepping away. 

So this sends, I would say, a pretty clear message. Holmes is sympathetic to Mary despite her lying, as he was to Helen Stoner and the two Violets. The fact that he invites her to the resolution shows he has a higher opinion of her in the adaptation than he does in canon. But he most definitely DOES NOT WANT her to touch him. By contrast, Holmes not only touches Watson during this scene, but seems to be using touch to persuade Watson to go along with him during the ‘trial’:

I say this partly because, while delivering the line “Gentleman of the jury,” Brett separates the first word quite deliberately into “gentle man.” We find out later that Watson actually has some serious reservations about what Holmes is asking him to do here (among other things, he’s now an accessory to whatever felonies Holmes is committing tonight). But he can’t resist Holmes’s appeal here to the Watson only he knows–the “gentle man” who’s been with him all these years, who’s taken him back after the Fall, and who can’t help responding to his touch. I mean after all, this is how poor Watson’s day began:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt1dTOVB6)

The GIF slows that down; at normal speed it’s less seductive and more comic (I love the way he leaves, then pops back in to nag him some more: “Get your clothes and come!”). But anyway…here, I guess, is my point. Sure, Granada always shows them in separate beds, and in other ways refuses to Make It Canon. But Granada never pretends, even for a moment, that Holmes is heterosexual. Everything he does for Mary Fraser and John Crocker in this episode is done  _through_  his relationship with Watson, who is given the right to confirm or revoke the freedom that Holmes is offering Crocker. 

In the canon story, that’s the end of it. But this episode has more in store for Watson. First, we find out that Holmes was wrong in thinking that Watson was gullible for buying Lady Brackenstall’s account of her husband’s drinking. In a conversation with her on the way out, we learn that she was really describing her father’s drinking, and he tells her he knew she couldn’t have come up with something so realistic from nowhere. Doctor Storyteller knows his shit, even if he’s not as smart as Holmes. Then, there’s a very interesting conversation with a couple of snifters by the fire, in which Watson warns Holmes against making himself “both the advocate and the judge.” This is consistent with Watson’s reaction to Holmes letting Ryder off at the end of “Blue Carbuncle;” but here, although he went along with it at the time, Watson is less willing to let Holmes off the hook. And actually, this is the moment at which I think I made my peace with Hardwicke as Watson. I would say, comparing him to Burke, that Burke is a more intuitive actor, and I really miss that. I also miss the snap and fire his disputes with Brett used to have. But Hardwicke is maybe more cerebral, and this helps with these moments where Watson’s demonstrating his expanding wisdom. His affection for Holmes is never in doubt during this scene, but we also see that he’s lost the starry-eyed wonder that Burke was so good at conveying. “It’s just as well you are unique,” he says, finally. I love the reactions here. Holmes is unnerved by this. Watson smiles at him to reassure him. But Holmes is not, finally, entirely reassured. They go back to drinking their snifters by the fire, and the film freezes on that image for the closing credits. 

And this takes me back to my original point. Holmes asks if Watson disapproves of the “happiness we have created” for Mary and Jack. “No, not in the least,” he says, earnestly. He’s happy enough to have helped Mary and Jack–because he and Holmes have their own happiness. He and Holmes haven’t been required by all this to give anything up; and the show treats their ‘happiness’–Holmes and Watson in 221b, relaxing by the fire as they discuss ethics and legal philosophy–as the keynote for the episode. Which, again, is a refreshing contrast to what happens in the second half of  _Sherlock_.

So all right. I’m ready for the Hardwicke Era. Onward we go.





	16. A Wilde Ride: THE SECOND STAIN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know, after I finished this episode, I started kicking myself for not having seen it back in 1986. I was 17, I could really have used it then. Why, I lamented, did I let my adolescent fear of change prevent me from the years of enjoyment I could have derived from “The Second Stain”? But then I said, no, do not be so hard on Young Plaidder. She was more prescient than you imagine. Somehow she mysteriously knew, without knowing, that in 2017, you would DESPERATELY need the shot in the arm that these ‘new’ episodes of Granada Holmes would provide–and that this particular episode would come along right at the moment that Cranky Old Plaidder would be most exquisitely poised to appreciate the many, many intertextualities which add zest and deliciousness to this most scrumptious of palimpsests.

You know, after I finished this episode, I started kicking myself for not having seen it back in 1986. I was 17, I could really have used it then. Why, I lamented, did I let my adolescent fear of change prevent me from the years of enjoyment I could have derived from “The Second Stain”? But then I said, no, do not be so hard on Young Plaidder. She was more prescient than you imagine. Somehow she mysteriously knew, without knowing, that in 2017, you would DESPERATELY need the shot in the arm that these ‘new’ episodes of Granada Holmes would provide–and that this particular episode would come along right at the moment that Cranky Old Plaidder would be most exquisitely poised to appreciate the many, many intertextualities which add zest and deliciousness to this most scrumptious of palimpsests.

So, below the cut tag I’m going to talk about, along with how the adaptation deals with the latent sexism of the original story, some of the people Doyle is stealing from here besides himself (the case of “Second Stain” is ominously similar to that of “The Naval Treaty”). These are: 1) Edgar Allan Poe’s 1844 story “The Purloined Letter” 2) once again, Wilkie Collins’s  _The Moonstone_ and 3) Oscar Wilde’s  _An Ideal Husband_. #1 involves stolen letters, #2 involves second stains, and #3 involves a London political power couple being saved from each other’s own unrealistic idealism–AND from a very delicate situation created by stolen letters–by their queer best friend. Oh, and it #3 also involves Jeremy Brett, because he played the abovenamed queer best friend in the 1969 BBC TV adaptation of  _An Ideal Husband_ :

[Originally posted by tremendousdetectivetheorist](https://tmblr.co/Z7gvaf2HqM1wH)

Look at how beautiful this man was. Just…[go watch the first five minutes of this](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D5XbNkmk9_ko%26t%3D101s&t=ZWRiYTkzOWYxZjM2YzczNGYxZjhlNWMzYmI0YWZiNWU1MTE1MmRhNyx4MXI3QUhUUA%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F160176883024%2Fa-wilde-ride-granada-holmes-the-second-stain&m=1). It will cure whatever ails you. And then, come back here and let me regale you with the story of how “The Second Stain” gives an older, smarter, less pretty yet more vigorous Jeremy Brett the chance to KILL IT in an episode whose resolution can be read, if you want to (spoiler alert: I want to) as a homage to  _An Ideal Husband_.

All right, first of all, let me just tell you: this episode is, as I believe the kids today say, LIT as FUCK:

I am aware, sadly, that later series of this show are going to force me to watch Brett in his tragic decline, and I’m honestly not looking forward to that. Fortunately, however, in 1986 he was at the height of his powers, and he turns in a  _fantastic_  performance. Hawkesworth did the screenplay for this one, and he stayed, as far as Holmes’s dialogue goes, very close to canon–which means that Brett is often faced, in this one, with paragraph-sized monologues. Not to worry; Brett has been dealing with giant chunks of dialogue since  _An Ideal Husband_  and 1969, and the amount of variation and life he gets into these little disquisitions is awe-inspiring. I particularly enjoy the ones where he’s telling Lord Bollinger and Trelawney Hope how hopeless the situation already is, and the one he delivers to Watson–right before a carelessly tossed match sets the pile of newspapers on fire–in which he vents his frustration about his lack of progress. Brett allows Holmes, in this story, to be genuinely at a loss; instead of delivering a pre-formed conclusion, in these monologues Holmes is talking himself through the reasoning process, looking not just for the solution but for some kind of reassurance that he might actually find one. Just that little moment when he looks up at Watson and says, “Should I go to Paris?” as if he’s really not sure and hoping maybe Watson could answer the question for him–there are dozens of these little unexpected yet always ultimately in character choices that Brett makes on his way through these speeches. 

And then, along with this nuanced verbal performance of Holmes’s uncertainty and doubt, you get the genius of Brett’s physical performance every time Holmes catches a break. In the best scene Brett and Hardwicke have together in this episode, Holmes is about to head out the front door for his initial investigations when Watson calls him back by telling him that the guy he was planning to visit has been murdered. This is in canon, but in canon the whole thing happens in the sitting room at 221B. Hawkesworth by now knows exactly how to milk this, and it’s glorious. Holmes comes running upstairs, and he and Watson are both so excited that they wind up standing in the hallway while Watson reads the story out of the paper as Holmes listens and interjects. Then Holmes grabs the paper and runs in, with Watson behind him, and finishes reading it out loud himself; and when Watson suggests that maybe the murder is a coincidence, he just tosses the thing in the air. As I observed re “Dancing Men,” I honestly think I would watch an hour of just Jeremy Brett interacting with paper. I don’t know why; maybe it’s nostalgia for the pre-digital world, which I actually remember. But I just love all the paper.

Which brings me at last to the letter. First of all…can we have a moment of silence, please, for the world in which potentates who liked to shoot their mouths off and say shit that could start a war if the wrong people heard it had to write that shit down by hand on paper, put that unique piece of paper in an envelope, and then mail it to the (single) recipient? Instead of blurting it all out on Twitter? All day every day?

God, if Lord Bellinger and Trelawney Hope–or Sherlock Holmes, for that matter–could have known that one day there would be such a thing as Donald Trump’s Twitter account, it would have killed them all. But they didn’t know how good they had it; and so they were very, very, very anxious about all their sensitive documents. The late Victorians were living in an information age too; but everything had to be done on paper. That would perhaps explain all the blackmailing that seems to get done in Doyle’s stories; if every time you want to make a date with your secret lover you have to send him something in writing, using a servant as intermediary, the odds are good that at some point you’re going to be in Milverton’s office trying to buy the fucking thing back. And obviously, paper is a big part of Doyle’s imagination of international intrigue. After all, if they’re that worried about the damn letter, Hope et al. could have burned it. But no, they saved it thinking they could get some use out of it in some future diplomatic crisis; and now it’s disappeared, and they’re fucked.

This is a higher-stakes version of the crisis that the official French detective, G., comes to consult C. Auguste Dupin about in Poe’s “The Purloined Letter.” From  _A Study In Scarlet_  we know both that Doyle read Poe’s detective stories and that he was very concerned to differentiate Sherlock Holmes from Dupin. The influence is undeniable, however. You know how Holmes is always complaining to Watson that he’s turning their cases into sensational tales instead of mini-monographs on the science of deduction? Well, if Watson ever listened to Holmes’s writing advice, all of Watson’s stories would come out like “The Purloined Letter.” There is a juicy story in there–a nefarious minister steals a sensitive letter from a royal personage via a brilliant but simple and daring stratagem, then immediately begins blackmailing her with it–but Poe is more concerned with letting Dupin discuss philosophy, mathematics, and the art of reasoning with his unnamed narrator friend. The Big Idea in “The Purloined Letter” is that in order to outwit a criminal, you have to adjust your own intellect to the level of said criminal. If you can’t make yourself either smart enough or stupid enough to think the way he does, you don’t win the game. Dupin gets the letter because he realizes that the nefarious Minister has had the simple, bold, brilliant idea of hiding the letter in plain sight. G. the official detective laughs his ass off at first when Dupin suggests that he might be failing because the case is too simple; but he’s pretty stoked when Dupin trades him the letter for a cheque for 50,000 francs.

“A Scandal in Bohemia” obviously owes something to “The Purloined Letter”–G’s methods of recovering the letter are very similar to the King of Bohemia’s, and Dupin also hires an accomplice to create a distraction while he’s in the nefarious Minister’s apartment–and so does “The Second Stain,” which contains a miniature version of the “Purloined Letter” scenario (Lucas has obtained a sensitive letter with which he blackmails Lady Hilda) within a larger, higher-stakes replication of it. True to form, however, Doyle has added a romance to it: the real problem here–or at least the object of the real resolution–is the rift that this letter business threatens to open up between Hilda and Trelawney Hope. That brings it closer to  _An Ideal Husband_ , in which a different kind of letter-induced political crisis is finally treated as secondary to the question of whether men and women, in this society, can accept each other’s weaknesses gracefully enough to continue loving each other.

The “second stain” idea is something Doyle has used before in “Abbey Grange,” where (in canon; they left this out of the adaptation) one of the clues that Lady Brackenstall’s story is wack is that there are flecks of Sir Eustace’s blood on the seat of the chair to which she was supposedly tied during the murder. Holmes notes that if they examined Lady B’s dress from that evening they’d probably find a corresponding stain. This takes us back to our old friend  _The Moonstone_ , in which the major clue to the disappearance of the diamond is a smear made by the thief’s skirt in the paint on Rachel’s bedroom door. The ‘official’ detective of that novel, Sergeant Cuff, immediately realizes that the way to crack this case is to find the piece of clothing that has a corresponding paint stain on it. In  _The Moonstone_ , the phrase “the stained dress” is repeated almost as often as it is in the Starr Report, and it points out all the ways in which the theft of the Moonstone from Rachel’s bedroom in the dead of night becomes a threat to Rachel’s reputation and ‘purity.’ Rachel is, for a while, the chief suspect in the theft of her own diamond, and…OK, I’ll stop there. My point is, the word “stain” has Connotations, especially in the context of a woman’s ‘honor’ or ‘virtue,’ which in this era were synonymous–for women–with sexual fidelity and chastity. Lady Hilda, in order to defend herself against the stain that her own letter would leave on her ‘honor,’ gets herself involved in a bloody business that threatens to leave an even  _bigger_ stain: Lucas’s wife kills him because she assumes Lucas is having an affair with Lady Hilda, and indeed it is very unusual for a woman to be alone in the home of a strange man at that time of night, as we will discuss in a minute. And then she discovers that her shenanigans will transfer this scandal to her husband, creating (if you will) a  _second_  stain on  _his_  honor.

All right. So, in the ACD canon story, once Lady Hilda comes into the picture, there is a lot of byplay about Women. This is the story in which Holmes utters the fateful words, “The fair sex is your department, Watson.” Watson describes Hilda as possibly the most beautiful woman in London, and then Holmes goes off on how hard women are to read, because they’re so concerned about their appearance that they will skulk in the shadows and act guilty when in fact it may just be that they’re having a bad hair day. The adaptation keeps some of this; but it’s counteracted by the actress playing Lady Hilda, who either hadn’t read the canon story or had read it but decided she didn’t give a fuck. In the canon story, Lady Hilda is basically a hot mess; she’s always terrified, always on the verge of tears, always pale, and always doing a lot of Bad Acting to telegraph her guilt. Well, Patricia Hodge is having none of that. Her Lady Hilda has nerves of…well, maybe not steel exactly. Whalebone, maybe. At any rate, she comes into 221B swinging her class privilege left and right. She fences with Holmes instead of pleading with him. In her dealings with Eduardo Lucas, which are staged in the adaptation, she comes across as vulnerable but also intelligent, sophisticated, and willing to do some dirt if she decides it’s necessary. In other words, she’s a lot more like her husband the diplomat than he thinks she is. In her first interview with Holmes, she mentions that her husband won’t discuss politics with her, ever; in her last interview with him, right before Hope arrives, she tells him that she agreed to steal the Potentate’s Letter because she had no idea what it would mean–and she couldn’t have, because nobody’s ever wanted her to understand what her husband does or indeed politics in general. All that’s in canon. What’s not in canon is the speech Trelawney gives while embracing Hilda after he discovers (as he thinks) that the letter was in the box all along–in which he talks to her patronizingly about how of course she can’t possibly understand this because it’s politics, but she should just know that things have suddenly turned out really well. It makes the point that he, and all the men around him, have been underestimating her (and all the women like her) all their lives. Trelawney has no idea that his wife has not only stolen his precious document out of his box but witnessed a murder, done an unauthorized search of a crime scene, and bearded Holmes Himself in his den–or indeed that she has a) ever lied to him b) is lying to him now and c) plans to lie to him for the forseeable future. Hilda and Trelawney go back into their happy marriage which is now full of forbidden secrets–all of which Hilda knows, and none of which Trelawney knows.

And here we come to Act IV of  _An Ideal Husband_.

 _An Ideal Husband_ , which dates from 1895, also involves a husband and wife team–Sir Robert and Lady Gertrude Chiltern–where the husband is a big deal in politics. It also involves a dual sensitive-letter plot (each person in this marriage has a sensitive letter that they are afraid will ruin them if the wrong people find out about it). And for each of them, Sir Robert’s best bachelor friend Lord Goring is instrumental in solving the problem. And I guess I just can’t help getting a kick out of the fact that Jeremy Brett, in a way, got to play this role twice. 

It’s like Brett was already known back in 1969, somehow, as the go-to guy for stories about late Victorian dandies whose hobby is saving people who write indiscreet letters from their blackmailers. Like, when they were thinking about who to cast for Lord Goring, the producers were like, “I want Jeremy Brett for this.” “I don’t know, I was thinking maybe Derek Jacobi.” “Dude, no no no no. It’s gotta be Brett.” “Why?” “Why? Have you SEEN what that guy can do with paper?”

And this is one reason why I love the ending of this episode so much. In Act IV of  _An Ideal Husband_ , Goring tries to swipe Gertrude’s sensitive letter before Robert can get to it; but he can’t get there in time, and instead Robert and Gertrude wind up working it out on their own. In this version of “Second Stain,” Holmes gets to pull off the sleight of hand that Goring never got to do. Hawkesworth has been concerned all the way through to keep the energy up and to increase the sense of urgency whenever possible. In the canon story, once Hilda caves and confesses, they find Trelawney’s dispatch box, put the letter into it, and then go back to waiting for him like nothing’s happened. In the adaptation, Trelawney’s now keeping the dispatch-box with him, so Holmes has to pull the switch right in front of him. They fudge how he actually does it; but somehow, Holmes introduces the letter into the pile of secret papers  _while Trelawney is looking through it._ And boy is he pleased about it:

Watson’s a little out of focus there, but I bet he could use a cigarette too. And in fact, that’s really the best thing about this episode: it’s just so satisfying. So many ups and downs, so much energy–the scene with him crawling all over the floor looking for the secret compartment while Watson keeps a lookout for the fuzz is priceless–and in the end, so much joy when it all comes out right for once:

You know, these moments are fleeting and you can’t hold them long. But it’s nice to know that even in 2017, you can still feel the joy they captured on this day over 30 years ago, when Brett and Hardwicke were still alive and kicking, and it was always 1895.


	17. And Under: THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL

So, when I started this I did promise these writeups would be enjoyable even for peopel who don’t watch  _Sherlock_. And mostly, I haven’t really had much occasion to do comparisons, except when it came to “Empty House.” Nevertheless, while this review is going to focus mainly on the Granada episode and the adaptation–especially the way Jeremy Paul, who also adapted “Speckled Band” and “Naval Treaty” for Granada, manages to make a compelling hour of television out of a story I’ve never had any time for–I am going to talk about the profound influence that I believe this specific episode had, not only on  _Sherlock_  in general, but on “The Final Problem” in particular.

Mark Gatiss, Wikipedia tells me, was born in 1966, which makes him 3 years older than I am. He’d have been 18 in 1984 when the Granada series first aired, and 20 when this episode ran. He is obviously a diehard lifelong Holmes fan, and so obviously he watched this series. [“The Abominable Bride,” as I discussed](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/137078404414/sherlocks-dreamwork-a-higher-standard), is clearly (among other things) an elaborate  _homage_  to the Granada series. Not having ever made it to the Hardwicke era, however, I could not at that point appreciate how deeply “The Musgrave Ritual”–the episode, more than the ACD canon story–must have incised itself into Mark Gatiss’s brain. Understanding this doesn’t make “The Final Problem” any less insane; but it does answer a question I’ve long had about this episode, which is, “Where the hell did any of this come from?”

So I promised a while back that you wouldn’t have to hear any more reminiscences about my carefree youth back in the 1980s. In fact, I find, there’s one more left in the dispatch-box. As I’ve said, I stopped following the series after they switched Watsons on me. However, as I was watching the beginning of “The Musgrave Ritual,” I realized that this is the one Hardwicke episode that I saw part of, back in the day. I turned it off right after Holmes and Watson’s arrival at Musgrave, after Holmes asks after Musgrave’s wife, and he says, “I’m not married, Holmes,” and Holmes replies, “How wise!”

I found this scary. I realized that this was meant to be an indication that Holmes was slipping, and I didn’t want to see that happen. I had a horror of addiction, when I was a teenager–no doubt encourage by my mother–and if this was going to be a story about Holmes rotting his brain with cocaine, I didn’t want any part of it. In fact, that’s not really most of what “The Musgrave Ritual” is about; but this is the first post-Return episode in which the syringe makes an appearance. It’s prepared by Holmes’s reference to his “lethargy” during the drive up–Brett lets you know Holmes is using it as a euphemism–and from the look on Watson’s face it appears that he thought maybe Holmes had kicked the habit during his worldwide walkabout. Poor Watson doesn’t even say anything about it. But he must have been secretly pretty glad when the butler went missing.

Anyway, so, there are three reasons why “The Musgrave Ritual” has always been one of my least favorite stories. One: no Watson. “The Musgrave Ritual” is an old case, from the beginning of Holmes’s career, which survives amongst his records as a peg with a string on it and a few old coins. Holmes tells Watson the story to get out of cleaning up their sitting room. Two: more telling than showing. All of the most interesting things in this case have already happened before Musgrave shows up in London to consult Holmes. And three: I’m American. When I was 12, I had no idea who the fuck Charles I was, or what a cavalier was. I eventually learned, of course; but even then, I couldn’t really  _care_.

Jeremy Paul’s adaptation fixes two of these problems very well, and does its best with the third. He moves the case into the present, so that the whole thing happens while Holmes and Watson are down visiting Musgrave for the weekend. This helps solve the second problem: all the events which, in the story, are narrated by Musgrave actually happen during that weekend. As for the third problem…well, they tried. For the time, the way they attempt to layer the seventeenth-century history of this case over the Victorian-present-day investigation is sort of cool. At this moment, well, when I see a guy dressed up as a cavalier riding a horse and handing off his bag to a guy who is CLEARLY the actor playing Reginald Musgrave in old-guy hair and makeup with a cloak pretending to be his own great-great-great-great grandfather, it is kind of hard to take that seriously. The most effective strategy for problem #3, really, was showing Holmes piecing together the bits of crown while he explained its provenance and history. Good job with the prop, everyone on the prop team; and A+ job for Brett’s use of Holmes’s natural histrionic talents to make his little mini History Channel documentary compelling. Although it is true that initially, they all completely fail as archaeologists. Of COURSE it’s all dull and dirty, that thing was buried back in 1649. Did you expect it to be shiny after two and a half centuries in a box in a damp cellar?

This adaptation thus provides even more confirmation of my Everything’s Better With More Watson theory. Watson is incorporated into the investigation in reasonably logical ways; but more to the point, we get to see Holmes and Watson on holiday, and it’s pretty funny. Holmes, who has a cold or maybe just hates fresh air, spends the first part of the episode swathed in shawls, flinging them about his shoulders as if they were Norma Desmond’s fox furs. I don’t know if the cold is supposed to be another symptom of addiction or what, but it definitely provides occasion for some entertaining acting choices. He’s petulantly uninterested in the Things You Do On A Visit To A Country House, sitting morosely on a bench (wrapped in God knows what) while Watson goes out to kill some grouse. It’s nice to see him and Watson getting to relax a bit, before everything goes down.

Once Holmes has a puzzle to solve, though, downtime is over; and we share Watson’s joy and relief as Holmes’s engines start revving. Paul also makes the solution slightly more complicated by adding the oak tree weathervane, which helps explain how so many previous generations could have failed to solve this puzzle. (Why everyone assumes that the trees named in the ritual won’t have grown at all since 1649, I don’t know; but then I’m not a botanist, maybe it’s not bullshit.) But what I like about this one, and about “Dancing Men,” is that they manage to actually dramatize the finding of the solution, instead of just glossing over it. Brett’s good enough at drawing your interest that you can watch him messing around with fishing rods and twine and whittling pegs and whatnot and still be entertained. And watching them row him across the little moat thingy, standing erect in the prow of that tiny dinghy for all the world as if he were George Washington crossing the Delaware, is priceless:

But here’s what I really want to give the props to Jeremy Paul for: he realized that there is some sensational psychodrama buried in “The Musgrave Ritual,” and he does a much better job than Doyle did of bringing it to life. What happens to Brunton is very Edgar Allan Poe, and although Doyle does indulge himself in speculation about Brunton’s hideous final moments, the limitations of first-person narration mean that we can’t really know exactly how it went down. Paul recreates the love triangle that drives the murder, managing to give us a convincing glimpse into how Brunton operates as a “Don Juan” and a much clearer understanding of why his ex drops the rock on him. Johanna Kirby is a compelling and unsettling presence in this episode as Rachel Howells, the housemaid with the “fiery Welsh temper” who’s been loved and left by Brunton. Holmes and Watson now get to witness her freakout when Brunton’s name is mentioned (Watson being the one who gets to deal with Rachel’s medical care after she faints). We the viewers get to see how Brunton got her to help him, and why she turned on him at the last minute; we also get to hear him screaming for help and banging on the stone while she walks away. That whole sequence is legitimately chilling, 1980s production values and all. Her final flight into the lake is a little over the top; but it’s worth it to set up that little extra spine-tingling moment as Holmes and Watson drive back to the station. Holmes says, as he does in canon, that he figures Rachel Howells is far away and starting over with the secret buried in her heart. But we know that she isn’t. And sure enough, just before the final credits, Brunton’s ex heads down to the lake, and up she comes:

OK, so I’m 48 and used to better special effects, but this still got me. There is a genuine little frisson of horror as you watch Rachel’s drowned corpse rise to the surface, becoming more recognizable every second. And that’s probably partly because of the growing dread we feel as poor Janet Tregellis approaches the edge of the lake–because we saw Rachel throw herself into it, but also because we’ve already been taught that this is the kind of thing that distraught women who’ve been abandoned by their lovers do:

That is, of course, Sir John Everett Millais’s “Ophelia,” painted in 1851 and well-known to Victorians (and to me, thanks partly to [@goddamnshinyrock](https://tmblr.co/m6hQJoezO9DE9IrrK93_iiA), who is now my sole source for art history). The parallels are not exact but there are undeniable compositional similarities. That final image of Rachel presents her murder of Brunton as a kind of Ophelia’s Revenge; yes, she winds up drowning herself, but first she’s gonna get the guy who did her wrong. It reminds us that the whole “Musgrave Ritual” plot, since it’s all about things being buried, is great fodder for psychoanalysis as well as horror; like Rachel’s horrible corpse, the whole episode is about What Lies Beneath. Holmes gets stuck at the very end of the hunt because he’s forgotten the most important part of the instructions, which (in the adaptation) Watson excitedly reminds him of: “And under! You’ve forgotten the ‘and under’!” Excavation is one of the primary metaphors for psychoanalysis; and it’s also a very common trope for mystery novels, given that we’re always trying to discover something that’s been  _buried_  in the past.

 Now I am not really that fond of psychoanalytic criticism, and so I’m not gonna pursue that reading of this episode; but I WILL tell you who has DEFINITELY pursued that reading: Mark “The Roads We Walk Have Demons Beneath Them And Yours Have Been Waiting For A Very Long Time” Gatiss.

So Eurus is basically half Hannibal Lecter and half Ophelia. I mean the Ophelia connection was always obvious. Not only is her entire life a mad scene, not only does she spend her entire life wittering about in white nightclothes with mad preraphaelite hair (which is supposed to be her own? though she has much shorter hair as John’s shrink?), but she’s played by Sian Brooke, who was Ophelia in the famous Benedict Cumberbatch  _Hamlet_  in 2015:

While searching in vain for a photograph showing both of them in Hamlet, I came across one of the publicity images for that production:

Why is it that this children’s party of the damned seems to me like it could also be Halloween night at the Holmes children’s house? Eurus in the middle, Sherlock next to her, Mycroft in the foreground giving us that “how long must I endure this hilarity” glare, and poor old Victor Trevor in the background checking out his pirate sword.

But I have wandered from my original point, which was: now I finally understand why  _Sherlock_ ’s “The Final Problem” drags “The Musgrave Ritual” into the whole Eurus mess. Every adapter has to read “The Musgrave Ritual,” because the opening paragraph establishes many of what have become canon details about the 221b sitting room (the Persian slipper, the V.R. in bullet holes, the jackknife on the mantelpiece). But it seems obvious to me now that the Granada adaptation of “Musgrave,” and especially those final moments, must have made a much deeper impression on Gatiss than the actual story. Water plays a much more important role in the adaptation, not only because of the staging of Rachel’s death but because in the adaptation, one of the locations has to be reached by boat. Now, unfortunately I don’t know how to make GIFs, but let me tell you about the way they transition into the Great Dinghy Journey, because this is the  _Sherlock_ iest bit of cinematography that I have yet seen on this show. We start with Holmes standing, apparently, on the grounds:

And then, his image starts drifting forward, obviously separating from the background. This is very confusing, because Holmes himself doesn’t appear to be moving; it’s as if he’s become detached from his environment and is just floating toward you. At the same time, he’s descending through the bottom of the frame:

as if he is actually sinking into the water to drown. But right after his head disappears, the angle changes, and you discover that he’s standing in a boat which is being rowed across this little moat thing:

The camerawork is enhanced by the music, which is a retro version of the show theme in which the violin struggles to ascend against a descending and dirge-like bass line that contributes to the sinking effect. So someone  _really_  wanted to do this Descending To The Lower Depths transition; that’s why they’ve got Holmes  _standing up_  in a rowboat like some idiot who’s never been on the water. And I have to believe that this bit of Freudian camerwork was appreciated even more lustily by the young Mark Gatiss than it is by Cranky Old Plaidder. I would go so far as to say that we might be looking at the origins of  _Sherlock’_ s distinctive visual style.

If my crackpot theory is correct, then the “Musgrave Ritual” stuff in “The Final Problem” is not only Sherlock’s return to his origins but Mark Gatiss’s. All that burying-alive and drowning is self-consciously redeployed in “The Final Problem” as Symbols of Buried Trauma and the Return of the Repressed. John chained to the bottom of the well amongst the bones of poor little Victor Trevor simultaneously evokes Brunton’s death and Rachel’s death, as the well is both a narrow stone chamber and a body of stagnant water. As in “Musgrave Ritual,” Sherlock can only find John by decoding Eurus’s maddening little song, a process which is so complex and goes by so fast that no spectator has a prayer of following it. In this case, however, there’s a happy ending for both of “Musgrave Ritual’s” submerged victims, as Sherlock first rescues Ophelia and then liberates the man she’s immured. 

Of course, I could be completely wrong. But even if I am, this is still a very enjoyable episode. It’s not a *great* Watson episode, but he does get to contribute to the solution, and Hardwicke and Brett have pretty much settled into a rhythm now. Paul includes a cute little scene in which Watson reverently explains Holmes’s methods to Musgrave, who looks at both of them like they’re nuts (this is dialogue that used to be in the narration in the ACD story, and I just want to point out that it is very much indebted to “The Purloined Letter”). Mainly, though, I have to take my hat off to both Jeremies here for making something fabulous out of what I always thought of as very dull material. Indeed, they have polished that old pile of rusty metal until it gleams like the diadem of Charles the First himself.


	18. What Were They Smoking?: THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I saw “Twisted Lip” was up next, my first thought was: Do I have to? Do I really? To call the canon story ‘problematic’ would be an understatement; it is a festival of late Victorian prejudices. How, if your brand is being faithful to canon, are you going to take a plot which combines Orientalism, racism, and classism with contempt for the disabled and the poor and make a silk purse out of that sow’s ear? 
> 
> But then, I thought, I never liked “Musgrave Ritual” either; let’s see if they can make something of this one.
> 
> Well, I would not say they made it better. They just made it weirder. This has to be one of the trippiest episodes ever.

When I saw “Twisted Lip” was up next, my first thought was: Do I have to? Do I really? To call the canon story ‘problematic’ would be an understatement; it is a festival of late Victorian prejudices. How, if your brand is being faithful to canon, are you going to take a plot which combines Orientalism, racism, and classism with contempt for the disabled and the poor and make a silk purse out of that sow’s ear? 

But then, I thought, I never liked “Musgrave Ritual” either; let’s see if they can make something of this one.

Well, I would not say they made it better. They just made it weirder. This has to be one of the trippiest episodes ever. 

All right, so let me first talk about the canon story. I’ve mentioned before that late Victorian London was trying to cope with a massive housing crisis and widespread unemployment fueled by a mass migration of people from the country to the city. All through the first 24 stories you can see little glimpses of the poverty and human misery that may be largely quarantined in the slums, but nevertheless occasionally infiltrates the world of Holmes and his middle-class clients. The “Baker street irregulars” introduced in  _Sign of Four_  are cute and all, but they’re also evidence of a population of homeless and unsupervised children living on the street. In “Scandal in Bohemia,” nobody thinks it unusual at first that there are multiple grown men fighting each other for the chance to earn a tip by opening Irene Adler’s carriage door. In “The Crooked Man,” Nancy Barclay is doing charity work with the homeless and poor when she runs into Henry Baker. And so on.

But none of that would prepare you for the plot Doyle creates for “Twisted Lip,” which he seems to have thought of as primarily a comic story. The basic premise is that Neville St. Clair, despite being educated and from a middle class background, has decided to become a professional beggar  _because it pays better_  than journalism. There may be a joke about stingy magazine editors in here somewhere; but there’s  _definitely_  a lot of contempt for the poor. The poor must be poor because of their own personal shortcomings; look, Neville St. Clair proves that with smarts and wit and industriousness you can make a gentleman’s income  _just by begging._ But of course not _every_  beggar could do this; it worked for St. Clair only because he’s really middle-class and therefore better at everything, including begging, than the ‘real’ poor. And yet, if Neville St. Clair can buy a house in the suburbs and support a wife and kids just on half-crowns he begs from people on the street, what excuse do all of these  _other_  poor people have for remaining poor? Why don’t they all brush up their act, engage in witty repartee, entertain the gentry, and get rich like him? And then there’s the fact that “Hugh Boone” gives himself fake disabilities in order to pry more pity and therefore more money out of passersby, which provides support for the claims made then (and still made now) that the poor either counterfeited or intentionally courted disabilities in order to prey on the sensibilities of the middle class. Through Neville St. Clair, the act of asking people richer than you to spare some of their cash is presented as fraud. And this is before we get to what’s going on with the opium den.

All right, well, so what does Granada do with this? Well, as I said, it gets weird.

First there’s the indecision about the episode’s tone. There’s some domestic comedy introduced at the beginning–again, Granada suppresses the marriage, so they had to sort of rewrite the opening–with Watson being put out that Holmes has stood him up for a dinner date, then even more put out when Mrs. Whitney shows up, and the whole case kind of turns into Dr. Watson’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day. But since Mrs. Whitney is in real distress, that doesn’t really work, as you can see with the little exchange between Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Whitney after Watson leaves. I love Rosalie Williams and I’m glad they seem to be writing more material for her, but this lame “men are just grownup children that we have to take care of” joking requires Mrs. Whitney to treat her husband’s leaving her and disappearing into an opium den for three days as a kind of boyish pecadillo. At any rate, Watson is grumpy the whole way through, which is too bad, because he and Holmes are sleeping in the same room for once (famously, Holmes tells Watson in the canon story that “my room at the Cedars is a double-bedded one”). At the same time, Mrs. St. Clair, who is sort of a comic figure in the canon story, is taken very seriously, and her strength and great love for Neville are conveyed in the scene where she searches the rooms she saw him disappear into. 

While all this is going on, there are these scenes in which Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. St. Clair venture into the Bad Parts of Town and are menaced by poor people. There’s a lot of subjective camera, especially in the scene where Mrs. St. Clair wanders into Swandam Lane, where these poor people are shot from the bourgeois-eye-view:

This comes right after Mrs. St. Clair hands a small coin to a child who’s standing outside a pub next to an adult wearing a placard reading “DESTITUTE.” The girl immediately runs into the pub, at which point the doors open and a flood of ragged, dirty children comes forth, all asking for money:

So one can’t say they pulled punches when it came to depicting the poverty; indeed, they seem to have scoured the country for dissolute-looking extras to dress up in rags and lie around in the street. But all of this is shot in such an alienating way that the overall impression is not, this poverty is an injustice, but rather, poor people are scary. The same scariness is baked into the scene in the opium den, which takes forever, and which is shot like a scene in an 80s horror film.

Now, some of this is slightly mitigated when Neville is finally unmasked (I’m coming to that in a minute) and he tells the story of what really happened. In that sequence, at least, “the Lascar” is shown to be acting out of loyalty to him rather than out of cruelty to Mrs. St. Clair, and gets to be non-menacing and articulate for a couple minutes. But overall, not only does the scent of Orientalism remain strong, it pervades the whole production. I must say in all fairness that the adapter here is only following the Everything Should Come From Canon rule, because as Milligan argues, Holmes is described in “Twisted Lip” in very orientalizing terms, especially as he sits up all night smoking tobacco and dreaming his dreams. But I don’t know if it was really necessary to do the whole Buddha/enlightenment thing:

nor was it entirely mandated by canon that the soundtrack should become dominated by the sound of Tibetan meditation bowls–as it does. (This brought back unpleasant memories of my own cancer saga years ago, because my mother’s way of being helpful was to bring up a set of meditation tapes made by some breast cancer doctor/guru her friend was into, in which these meditation bowls were played while the doctor intoned, “IMAGINE THAT YOUR HEART IS AN EGG-SHAPED BALL OF LIGHT” in a voice like a buzz-saw.) When Holmes goes to wash his hands and face–an action they seem to love showing; not that I complain, but I do wonder why–they put it in slow motion and honestly it looks for a moment as if we’re just gonna go full-on  _Apocalypse Now_ and Holmes is going to start rambling about the smell of gardenias:

But then instead we go to him waking Watson up:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt1csAmnH)

and we’re back to Dr. Watson’s Very Bad Day. And here, you know, I’m just going to admit that I would have enjoyed the Watson stuff in this episode more if it were still Burke. I can’t help it. But moving on: again, this episode can’t decide whether it’s comic or scary. Possibly the biggest problem this creates is the Big Reveal in Hugh Boone’s jail cell, where they honestly try to get menace and suspense and creepiness out of a freaking sponge:

Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte…just relax…soon it will all be ov- WILL YOU SHUT THOSE BLOODY MEDITATION BOWLS UP!

So…all in all, you know, there’s some cute Holmes/Watson stuff in this one and a decent heroine and some work for Rosalie Williams and it’s not all bad…but Neville St. Clair’s “people don’t expect beggars to quote Shakespeare” shtick REALLY annoys me, the gratuitous Orientalism annoys me even more and…I mean that’s a SPONGE, man, am I seriously supposed to be scared of that? 

All right, well, at least they started strong, let’s hope things pick up in…let’s see what’s next…ah, “The Priory School.” That should be interesting.


	19. Guardian Angel: THE PRIORY SCHOOL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Priory School” is very entertaining, with a lot of action, interesting locations, and–in addition to some great scenes from Holmes–the added amusement of seeing Holmes and Watson on horseback and bicycle. There is also an attempt at some artistry on the part of the director, which I always appreciate. But there are also some major deviations from canon, especially toward the end. The short story is that it appears to me that the adaptation, done by T. R. Bowen of “Abbey Grange” fame, seems to be more protective of young Lord Saltire than Doyle was. And yet, Bowen’s changes also rehabilitate the boy’s extremely culpable father. It raises some interesting questions about what we’re really doing when we say we’re ‘fixing’ something from canon.

  * “The Priory School,” as a story, was not a favorite of mine as a youth; but I went back to it recently when I was writing “[Prior Engagements](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10939155/chapters/24339414)” and I came to appreciate it more. It’s a very modern situation, in a way–a young boy sent to school, largely to protect him from trouble at home, is nevertheless drawn into his parents’ mess, and nearly destroyed in the crossfire. What struck me most forcibly when I returned to it was the poignancy of a nine year old boy thinking that he was taking matters into his own hands–sneaking out of school hoping to be reunited with his mother–and discovering the hard way that he’s no match for a malicious adult. But the ACD story is not really that interested in young Lord Saltire as a character; he never speaks, and Holmes and Watson never interact with him. I thought this might be a story that would be improved by expansion and dramatization. And I was not wrong. “Priory School” is very entertaining, with a lot of action, interesting locations, and–in addition to some great scenes from Holmes–the added amusement of seeing Holmes and Watson on horseback and bicycle. There is also an attempt at some artistry on the part of the director, which I always appreciate. 

But there are also some major deviations from canon, especially toward the end. I can only speculate about why–but below the cut tag, I will. The short story is that it appears to me that the adaptation, done by T. R. Bowen of “Abbey Grange” fame, seems to be more protective of young Lord Saltire than Doyle was. And yet, Bowen’s changes also rehabilitate the boy’s extremely culpable father. It raises some interesting questions about what we’re really doing when we say we’re ‘fixing’ something from canon.

So let me first say that the real mystery of “Priory School” is: what in the world is going on at 221b *before* Dr. Huxtable shows up? The lights are down, the candles are lit, Watson is whispering, and Holmes is lying flat on the couch, apparently but evidently not really asleep. Watson seems not to want him disturbed. Holmes doesn’t show any signs of consciousness until Huxtable collapses on the floor, at which point he springs bolt upright. Is this some more of that “lethargy” he was talking about at the beginning of “The Musgrave Ritual?” Has Watson taken to supervising him during his drug trips now? Or have they just had a romantic candlelight dinner and were hoping, after a digestive nap, for a little postprandial private entertainment? Or what? When Huxtable asks Holmes to come back to the Priory School with him, Holmes starts talking about how busy they both are, while Watson looks at him with evident surprise. So what’s going on? Why’s he pretending he’s busy when he isn’t?

We will never know. Huxtable’s famous faint on the hearthrug is one of those little directorial touches I was talking about. While Huxtable’s out, we get a little montage of his perceptions of the past few days, as the boys’ choir sings “Libera me” while we see poor little Arthur’s empty room, empty desk and chair, dangling and neglected cleats, and so on. It conveys something we’re not going to get from Huxtable’s dialogue or his interactions with Holmes and Watson, which is that he is genuinely sad about what’s happened and concerned about the boy; in the canon story, he seems mainly concerned for the reputation of the school. It’s a creative way of getting in a little exposition along with some atmosphere, and two thumbs up for that. 

Anyway, one of my favorite things about “Priory School” is watching Holmes handle everyone. He handles Huxtable beautifully–he manages to get him to say that it was perfectly OK that Holmes basically searched him while he was unconscious, looking for trinkets to make deductions from–and he’s in top form confronting the Duke of Holdernesse as he tries to get Holmes kicked off the case. I love watching Sherlock Holmes reduce an aristocratic jackass to rubble while pretending to be polite and deferential. I think Brett loved it too; as soon as he hears the Duke is on the grounds, he gets this look on his face:

“Yeah, I’m gonna enjoy THIS.”

And he does. The way he forces the Duke, who is desperately trying to keep the lid on a family scandal, to welcome him into the investigation is a thing of beauty. Unlike in canon, Holmes casually-not-casually drops a reference to Heidegger’s bicycle (Heidegger’s Bicycle…sounds like an indie band) just to let him know: I already know too much about this investigation for you to cut me out of it. He wins; he knows it; the Duke knows it; it’s awesome. I think if I were Watson, watching Holmes lay the smackdown on an aristocrat who thinks he’s All That would be all the foreplay I needed.

But Watson isn’t actually there–because of course, since he’s not narrating now, he doesn’t have to be. This is, again, not a  _great_  Holmes/Watson episode, but Bowen seems to like to give Watson some extras; in this adaptation, he and Holmes figure it out about the “cow” horseshoes just about simultaneously, and Watson is given the job of shadowing Wilder and the boy while Holmes bikes over to Holdernesse Hall to confront the Duke one last time. He also has Watson reconstruct Heidegger’s movements, at Holmes’s direction, for Dr. Huxtable’s benefit. Not sure how I feel about that device; it feels a little Agatha Christie to me. But I do like the joke about Heidegger “fortifying himself for the task ahead,” which you think will be kidnapping but turns out to be grading. 

The investigation itself is, as I said, entertaining, and yet I did start to kind of get impatient with the way Bowen kept taking short cuts. There’s a lot less actual tracking, and a lot more stumbling across things. Instead of tracking down Heidegger’s body, Holmes finds it by following the crows; OK, points for atmosphere. Instead of tracking the patched-tire bicycle to the “squalid inn,” they go there because–of course–Watson’s hungry, and it’s the only place for lunch. And here…I know it will disappoint, but honestly, although I like Hardwicke fine, in these more recent episodes I find I do really miss Burke. I just can’t help wishing I were watching him instead. Sorry, Hardwicke fans. You never forget your first, I guess.

 I will say, though, I do kind of love the Lunch Episode. It’s all so awkward and weird and sinister and there’s Watson, who can certainly tell something’s going on, and is very curious about the parallel scratches on Hayes’s neck, but is still trying to act like a customer anyway. And then he gets his black pudding and sad accompaniments. “How is it, Watson?” “It is disgusting, Holmes.” 

So here’s the thing about the ending. In canon, what happens is that during their visit to the inn, Holmes figures out both that the boy is being held there by Wilder and that the Duke of Holdernesse knows this–because he’s at the inn with them. (Holmes finds this out by standing on Watson’s shoulders so he can get a look in the second floor window, a visual I am very sad to have been denied.) He then heads back to Holdernesse Hall for his final confrontation with the Duke, and this is my favorite part of the story, for reasons I explained above. Just look at how he gets past Wilder:

**“I must see the Duke, Mr. Wilder.”**

**“But he is in his room.”**

**“Then I must go to his room.”**

**“I believe he is in his bed.”**

**“I will see him there.”**

And in how many fanfics…but no. No, in canon,Holmes calls on the Duke, manipulates him into writing out a check for the 6,000 pounds’ reward, and then tells the Duke the jig is up:

     **The Duke’s beard had turned more aggressively red than ever against his ghastly white face.**

**“Where is he?” he gasped.**

**“He is, or was last night, at the Fighting Cock Inn, about two miles from your park gate.”**

**The Duke fell back in his chair.**

**“And whom do you accuse?”**

**Sherlock Holmes’s answer was an astounding one. He stepped swiftly forward and touched the Duke upon the shoulder.**

**“I accuse YOU,” said he. “And now, your Grace, I’ll trouble you for that check.”**

The situation after this point gets a little stickier. The Duke tries to buy Holmes and Watson’s silence by doubling the amount of the check. Holmes tells him look, I can help you, but first you have to tell me everything and then you have to let me do what I want. The Duke agrees. Holmes rips Holdernesse a new one, but having ensured Hayes’s arrest, and dispatched a servant to go bring young Lord Saltire home, he allows the Duke to send Wilder off to Australia instead of turning him in. Then he pockets the check, and that’s the end of the story.

I don’t blame Bowen for finding this unsatisfying. After all, Holmes has only the Duke’s word that Wilder will be gone, and there is plenty of evidence that Wilder has always been and will always be a real threat to Arthur’s safety (as I shall henceforth call young Lord Saltire). The business with the check probably seemed to Bowen to be unworthy of Holmes, especially after taking such a high-handed approach with the Duke up to this point. And yet, all of this is perfectly consistent with Holmes’s earlier behavior in cases like “Scandal In Bohemia,” “Blue Carbuncle,” and “Abbey Grange.” As long as he knows, and he is satisfied that justice as he understands it is being done, he’s not about helping out the police–and he’s shown himself plenty willing to take money off aristocratic clients, especially if they’ve given him attitude. “Discretion” is one of the things that people like the King of Bohemia pay him for, and Holmes knows that, and he’s made his peace with it–because the Kings of Bohemia fund his investigations on behalf of all the governesses and music teachers who can’t afford him. If he makes a habit of dragging all his aristocratic clients through the press, pretty soon he won’t get any more.

But Holmes is also swayed, I think, by something which is just not credible to a modern reader: Wilder’s genuine horror and remorse over Heidegger’s death. In the canon story, Hayes is the one who meets Arthur in the woods, and Wilder isn’t there when he kills Heidegger. According to the Duke, and this fits with what Holmes and Watson observe, Wilder undergoes a complete change of heart once he finds out that his little stunt has cost a man his life. He’s personally shattered, and he comes clean when the Duke confronts him. This is also part of a pattern, where Doyle will sometimes protect the ‘respectable’ criminal by giving him a ‘lower’ accomplice who does all the murdering. In  _Sign of Four,_ it’s Tonga who kills Sholto with the poison dart; Smalls is so mad about it that he beats Tonga  with a rope until he draws blood. Hayes is a lower-class villain straight out of Ruffian Casting; he’s fine with bashing a guy’s head in, but James, the aristocratic and sensitive son of the aristocratic and sensitive Duke, is horrified by it. And yeah, that is Doyle letting his inner late Victorian shine through, and I can see how Bowen would have felt that needed fixing.

From Bowen’s point of view, at least going by the adaptation, Wilder is the real criminal. Whereas Holmes seems primarily concerned with making sure that Heidegger’s murderer swings for it, Bowen is much less interested in the murder of the adult than in the abduction of the child. Wilder is shown manhandling and terrorizing Arthur as he drags him out of the inn; Watson gives chase, but can’t find him; and this leads to an actual search mob armed  _Frankenstein_ -style with actual torches chasing Wilder and Arthur into the depths of a system of caves, until Wilder, during the final standoff, falls to his death. 

So, this is all very dramatic (though the fall to the death is not well staged). And I sympathize with Bowen’s feeling that none of the adults in this story are thinking enough about Arthur. What I object to is that in order to avoid having Holmes let the Duke off the hook, Bowen lets the Duke off the hook himself. In Bowen’s adaptation, the Duke is never in on it; he doesn’t go to the inn, nor allow Wilder to let Ruben Hayes escape, nor promise to leave Arthur at the inn for three days so the police don’t find out where Arthur’s been and go after Hayes. These are all things that Holmes quite rightly roasts the Duke for during their final confrontation in Doyle’s story; and I’m sorry to lose that. Instead, Holmes winds up befriending the Duke, listening sympathetically when he opens up about his first love, and giving the Duke the chance to make it right by ordering the search party. So the Duke still gets off; we just don’t have to blame Holmes for it any more. The Duke also STILL writes Holmes a huge check; but now it’s out of gratitude for Holmes helping him See The Light, rather than as a bribe.

Well, maybe it mattered more to Bowen that Wilder dies for his crimes; maybe, like many another modern reader, he finds crimes against children more horrifying and less forgivable than crimes against adults, even when the crime against the child is objectively less severe. Holmes sends Watson off to follow Wilder and Arthur by saying, “You are now that boy’s guardian angel.” Watson is not great at being a guardian angel, but evidently it was important to Bowen that the grown-ups not just  _leave Arthur in captivity_  while they did the rest of their business, as the adults in the canon story undeniably do. You can see  _Sherlock_ ’s incorporation of “Priory School” into “The Reichenbach Fall” as a later example of that same shift in focus from the adults to the children; and it becomes a major problem for Sherlock that he doesn’t perform the appropriate amount of concern for the kidnapped siblings when they find the abandoned chocolate factory. In their version, the murder and the kidnapping have been combined, and the adult victim has disappeared completely.





	20. Pearls before Swine: THE SIX NAPOLEONS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a brilliant episode for character development, and all three actors make the most of the opportunity. In ACD canon, “The Six Napoleons” marks a major shift in the way Holmes and Lestrade interact. The adaptation takes this farther, finally making Lestrade a real character and laying, one could argue, the foundation for Greg Lestrade’s character and his relationship with Sherlock on Sherlock. Granada’s “Empty House” establishes that during the Hiatus, Lestrade and Watson developed their own working relationship, and in this episode they both follow Holmes around like residents following the attending. Holmes obviously really enjoys the extra attention, and it spurs him to new heights of histrionics that are quite entertaining and by this time quite familiar. But it’s the final conversation between Holmes and Lestrade at the end of this episode that makes it worth sitting through all the BS about Italians. At that point, this episode becomes truly extraordinary. You would think that by this point in the series you’d have pretty much seen everything Brett could do with this character. But you would be wrong.

In the course of this rewatch, I have found myself reaching for the phrase “this episode is uneven” pretty often. With Granada Holmes, there are a few episodes where it’s all good– “Blue Carbuncle,” “Speckled Band,” “Second Stain”–but there are a lot more episodes where you have to take the good with a certain amount of bad. So far, though, I can’t recall another episode that gives you the best and the worst that Granada Holmes had to offer in such close proximity. In the course of dramatizing Beppo’s backstory, there were so many, many terrible choices made. The first five minutes of this episode are so squirm-inducing you could well pull a muscle watching them. The squirming commences anew any time any of the Italian-speaking characters reappear for any reason whatsoever. 

And yet, at the same time, this is a brilliant episode for character development, and all three actors make the most of the opportunity. In ACD canon, “The Six Napoleons” marks a major shift in the way Holmes and Lestrade interact. The adaptation takes this farther, finally making Lestrade a real character and laying, one could argue, the foundation for Greg Lestrade’s character and his relationship with Sherlock on  _Sherlock_. Granada’s “Empty House” establishes that during the Hiatus, Lestrade and Watson developed their own working relationship, and in this episode they both follow Holmes around like residents following the attending. Holmes obviously really enjoys the extra attention, and it spurs him to new heights of histrionics that are quite entertaining and by this time quite familiar. But it’s the final conversation between Holmes and Lestrade at the end of this episode that makes it worth sitting through all the BS about Italians. At that point, this episode becomes truly extraordinary. You would think that by this point in the series you’d have pretty much seen everything Brett could do with this character. But you would be wrong. 

All right, let’s get the bad out of the way first: whoever devised the opening sequence of this episode should have been sacked immediately. I know it was the 1980s and everyone was really excited about the  _Godfather_  movies. And I will admit that the opening tracking shot is actually, from a purely cinematic point of view, a lot more interesting than the camera work normally is on this show. But that really only makes the content more insulting. I cannot think of a single Italian stereotype this episode doesn’t hit on their way to 221B. We open with this completely gratuitous image of a sultry Italian woman passionately…washing herself:

This is so bizarrely out of context for “The Six Napoleons” that I initially assumed I must have opened the wrong window or started it in the middle or something. No…this is our production team setting the scene for the tale of passion, lust, vengeance, and murder that follows. Doyle contented himself with making the Venuccis a family of small-time criminals, possibly with Mafia connections, but mainly focused on the theft and sale of the Black Pearl of the Borgias. John Kane, our adapter, apparently decided to expand this into a miniature Leoncavallo opera by positing a romance between Lucretia Venucci (it’s the black pearl of the BORGIAS, see) and Beppo, the workman who hides the pearl in the bust of Napoleon. By the way, Lucretia is played in this episode by someone I am quite familiar with, but shockingly did not recognize at all:

Marina Sirtis, everyone. Counselor Deanna Troi. That’s her. She does a great murder stare but does not have much dialogue in this episode. Made me kind of wish they had cast her as Sophia Kratides in “Greek Interpreter” and done the whole double-murder thing. But I digress.

To the extent that this prevents them from replicating Doyle’s fascination with phrenology and giving Beppo the “simian” muzzle that is supposed to indicate his status as a subhuman congenital criminal, I am grateful. (So much Lombroso in ACD canon. SO. MUCH.) Unfortunately this also means we get to watch Lucretia’s brother, Pietro, spend a solid minute screaming at Lucretia about what a whore she is and how she’s dishonoring the family, while smacking her in the head, right before he runs outside to go on a violent spree which ends with him getting into a knife fight with Beppo. All of this dialogue is in Italian, by the way, and none of it’s subtitled–at least not in the digital version I was watching. However, I kind of speak Opera Italian, and that’s really all you need to get the gist–since Italian opera librettos will teach you most of the more common words for “love,” “dishonor,” “vengeance,” “you whore,” and “I’ll kill him.”

Anyway. This part of “Six Napoleons” reminds me a lot of a certain type of  _X-Files_  episode, in which Mulder and Scully undertake an investigation which requires them to navigate a close-knit immigrant community with a Strange And Alien Culture, often with the help of a lower-ranking FBI agent or cop who’s from that culture and serves as their informant ( “Shapes,” “Hell Money,” “El Mondo Gira,” etc.). That’s basically the approach that Lestrade takes, both here and in the canon story: there’s an Inspector Hill who apparently specializes in policing London’s Italian quarter, and he’s responsible for identifying Pietro’s body and providing Lestrade with most of his wins. Holmes, who doesn’t have access to all this information, decides instead to follow the busts, and this turns out to do a better job of predicting Beppo’s next move. My point is, the adaptation elaborates on the Italian characters but it never really escapes the Doyle story’s assumption that Italian immigrants in London are both uncontrollably violent, possibly mad, and neck-deep in crime. It is almost as if Doyle were listening to Trump’s speeches when he came up with this plot.

But, again, balanced with this we get the story of Holmes’s developing friendship with Lestrade; and that turns out to be a (to me) unexpectedly compelling story. The three men involved in this investigation all have their own perspectives and their own theories, and it’s tremendous fun to see them playing off each other. Watson’s attachment to his own theory about this being a monomaniac with an “idee fixe” gives him more energy than we’ve seen form Hardwicke in the past couple of episodes. I particularly like the scene where he marches into the sitting room to tell Holmes the game is on, so he should finish up his tea and get dressed because they’re leaving in two minutes. That is one thing I do appreciate about what Hardwicke brings to the table: his Watson loves turning the tables on Holmes and taking charge, and Brett lets us know that Holmes low-key loves it. Take that however you will. Also delicious is Holmes trying to give Watson a hint about the streetlamp without Lestrade noticing, so Watson can score a point over Lestrade and temporarily get to the head of the class. 

Both Lestrade and Watson are trying to figure out WTH is going on with Holmes’s examination of Pietro’s body, and neither of them can do it, and that’s pretty funny. It turns out to be pretty entertaining to give Watson his own junior apprentice, so they can grouse to each other about what a hard-ass their teacher is and how hard they work–crashing on the couch, going out to Chiswick at 2am, hiding out in a cold gazebo where they can’t even smoke, etc:

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs25Ucpdg)

At the same time, you have Watson and Holmes sitting at the back of the room whispering to each other as they watch Lestrade trying to study Holmes’s “theories” without letting anyone find out:

[Originally posted by eldylabor](https://tmblr.co/ZTyMqv20vOfQD)

But the real payoff is at the end, after Holmes Dramatically Reveals the Black Pearl of the Borgias. In the Doyle story, Watson does talk about how deliberately dramatic he’s being, how much they enjoy that, and how they spontaneously applaud at the denouement. (We’ll just pass over the fact that once again Sherlock Holmes steals a valuable jewel and nobody does anything about it.) But the real punch comes when Lestrade walks up to Holmes and says, completely sincerely and with no trace of sarcasm or irony, “You know, we’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. We’re proud of you.”

It’s a great moment for Colin Jeavons and for his Lestrade, who has never been that honest or that generous with Holmes before. But oh my God, BRETT’S REACTION. I can’t find a gif of it and no single image can do it justice, but the camera stays with him for a long time, and every moment is a journey in itself:

I don’t know if I can explain how this affected me. I will try.

So you all know that I just routinely read Brett’s Holmes as gay. But here, you see what that means in a completely new context. He is not only  _completely astonished_ by what Lestrade is saying to him, he is on the verge of tears. And yes, as Doyle says, this is Holmes showing that he can in fact be emotionally affected by the “praise of an old friend.” But this is also Holmes caught between conflicting emotions as he listens to this praise  _from a member of the official police force_. This is the same police force, remember, that since 1885 has been empowered by the Criminal Law Amendment Act to arrest any man they catch having really any kind of erotic contact with any other man. What you see there is the heartbreaking ambivalence of the outsider who sees himself being recognized and validated by the insider. It’s never occurred to him that his relationship with the “official” detectives could ever be anything but antagonistic. It’s never occurred to him that Lestrade might genuinely appreciate Holmes and his “theories”–that Lestrade, after years of scoffing at Holmes and his methods and yet profiting off them all the same, should tell Holmes to be  _proud_  of who he is and what he does. Nor did he ever expect that Lestrade would invite him to go down to Scotland Yard and have Lestrade’s brethren “shake him by the hand,” thus  _publicly acknowledging him_  and thanking him for what he’s done for them. He’s only just now understanding how much he’s always wanted that. And yet he is also understanding how dangerous it would be for him to get used to it.

I guess I could just say: I know this feeling. I recognized it IMMEDIATELY. It is the feeling of someone who, say, has been in a relationship for 20 years and is suddenly offered the opportunity to make it legal. It’s the feeling of discovering, suddenly, that things  _have_  gotten better–and knowing, at the same time, that this could be and probably is temporary. It is the feeling of seeing your straight friends so happy for you, their happiness so blissfully uncomplicated by your ambivalence, and appreciating the love but also feeling the gulf between you and them. All of this, in one close-up, in one reaction, without saying a goddamn word. THAT is the magic of Jeremy Brett’s Holmes, right there.

I’ve always said that one of the best things about  _Sherlock_  was Rupert Graves’s Lestrade. It was never easy for me to imagine a similar characterization or relationship in Granada Holmes; but now I can. And that’s worth the crap you put up with on the way to the revelation.


	21. Death Is Always With Us: THE DEVIL'S FOOT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This episode, for me, is about more than the case. Everyone’s all “Three Garridebs” this and “Three Garridebs” that; but in canon, IMHO, “Devil’s Foot” is just as big a milestone in Holmes and Watson’s relationship. The adaptation emphasizes and expands that into something which–for me, anyway–becomes profound and moving. In the context of the Granada series, “Devil’s Foot” is a kind of emotional sequel to “Empty House,” in which the Reichenbach trauma is–surreptitiously and subterraneously–reopened, worked through, and healed. Mercifully, this episode is largely unconcerned with radix pedis diaboli’s central African origins; we do hear the occasional bit of drumming in the soundtrack, but we don’t have to submit to anything like the festival of stereotypes that opens “Six Napoleons.” The lethal horror induced by the drug is instead referred back to the one fear that drives all others–death–and its close companion, loss.

  


This story has always fascinated me. And despite some serious misfires by the production team, overall I love what they’ve done with it.

This episode, for me, is about more than the case. Everyone’s all “Three Garridebs” this and “Three Garridebs” that; but in canon, IMHO, “Devil’s Foot” is just as big a milestone in Holmes and Watson’s relationship. The adaptation emphasizes and expands that into something which–for me, anyway–becomes profound and moving. In the context of the Granada series, “Devil’s Foot” is a kind of emotional sequel to “Empty House,” in which the Reichenbach trauma is–surreptitiously and subterraneously–reopened, worked through, and healed. Mercifully, this episode is largely unconcerned with  _radix pedis diaboli_ ’s central African origins; we do hear the occasional bit of drumming in the soundtrack, but we don’t have to submit to anything like the festival of stereotypes that opens “Six Napoleons.” The lethal horror induced by the drug is instead referred back to the one fear that drives all others–death–and its close companion, loss. 

The premise of this episode–that Holmes has pushed himself to the point of physical collapse, and Watson has hauled him out to Cornwall to nurse him back to health–tragically coincides with some of the things happening in Brett’s life at around this time. I’m sure that history is well known to anyone who’s reading these reviews, so I won’t rehearse it here. It’s sad watching this and thinking about the fact that at this point, Brett didn’t even have ten years left to live. But that’s part of the story, as this episode tells it: we’re all dying, and sometimes the best thing we can do is embrace that knowledge instead of running from it. 

In the canon story, Watson’s narration hints that Holmes’s vices may have had something to do with the health crisis that sends them out to the back end of Cornwall. Holmes has ground himself down with “constant hard work of a most exacting kind, aggravated, perhaps, by occasional indiscretions of his own.” Gary Hopkins, the screenwriter, takes this hint and runs with it, using this episode to resolve Holmes’s addiction storyline. But, as I’m going to argue, Holmes’s addiction is revealed, in this episode, to be a symptom of, or a metaphor for, something much deeper. 

This episode begins with Holmes sitting grumpily in the carriage, swathed in a truly amazing array of wraps, telling Watson darkly, “You should have traveled alone,” to which a pained Watson responds, with false cheerfulness, “Nonsense! We’re on holiday!” The episode ends with one of many reversals, as Holmes waves away Watson’s concerns about his decision to let Sterndale go by repeating his own line back to him: “And besides, as you’re always telling me, we’re on holiday!” In between, Holmes undergoes a serious transformation which leads to a seismic shift in their relationship. And it all starts with that scene at the neolithic tomb, when Watson says, “I suppose death is always with us.” 

Of course it really starts long before that. But Watson, as we know, has never been able to get Holmes to do anything he REALLY doesn’t want to do. The cocaine use is the prime example of that. So as much as he bitches about it, the fact that Holmes agreed to go on this holiday indicates that he really does take the doctor’s advice seriously, and that he really is starting to worry about his own health. Almost as soon as they get out to their remote cottage, of course, Holmes breaks out the seven percent solution. But although we’ve seen plenty of other scenes where Watson catches Holmes using, this one is really different. First, we’ve never actually seen Holmes in the act of shooting up before. He’s always either looking at the syringe and thinking about it, or just rolling down his sleeve and putting the paraphernalia away as Watson walks in. This time, we watch him tying off and trying to raise the vein, and we can see how agitated and desperate he is. We also see him rather pathetically trying to conceal all of this from Watson–and that’s also new. In the earlier episodes, when Watson walks in on him after he’s done the deed, Holmes’s typical response to Watson’s silent reproach is a brazen stare with which Holmes basically dares Watson to comment on it. This is the first time Holmes has betrayed any shame or guilt over using cocaine. And again, that’s got to be because he’s starting to think about the possible consequences.

But when Watson says “death is always with us,” that opens things up on a lot of levels. In one sense, it’s a universal truth: we’re all mortal, death is a certainty for everyone. Implied, of course, is a message to Holmes: you’re mortal too, and if you don’t start taking better care of your body you’re going to destroy it. But I think it also has a personal meaning, as in: death is always with  _us_ , death is part of this relationship now. Specifically, your death. This is Watson telling Holmes: I lived with your death for three years. I’m still living with it. I don’t have to wonder what it’s going to be like for me when you die, because  _I already know_. And every time you shoot up, every time you chase after someone bigger and stronger and more heavily armed than you, every time you skip a meal or work for 72 hours straight, I see what’s coming. Every time you neglect or mistreat your body, I know you’re bringing us closer to the day when the worst thing in the world is going to happen to me. Again.

So when Holmes agrees, at least in my reading, he’s accepting not just the fact of death but the specific thing that Watson is telling him: that Holmes’s death is something that will happen to Watson too. And this is very important. Holmes came back in “Empty House” and made his confession and they made up; but Holmes didn’t really  _get_  what he did to Watson by deceiving him. His experience of those three years was completely different from Watson’s. For Holmes, those years were about cheating death: staying one step ahead of the assassins until he could come back home and shut them down for good. For Watson, the same years were about accepting Holmes’s death and learning to live with it. As much fun as they’ve been having since “Empty House,” they’re still far apart in ways they don’t want to talk about.

But after this conversation, we see some signs that Holmes is starting to understand Watson’s position. He buries the syringe, thus finally kicking (at least till their Cornwall holiday is over) the habit Watson has been after him to stop from day one. But more important, he learns how to live without constant external stimulation. He lets himself just  _be._ I’m not trying to get Zen about this; but the long solitary walks, the “meditations,” the hours spent communing with the weird death-laden landscape they’re in–all of this is new. Up to this point, he’s only ever sat still while either listening to music or smoking his way to the solution to a tricky case. This is him learning to treat himself as just as important and interesting as other people’s problems. Pouring out the vial and burying the syringe stands in for the renunciation of a way of being that he now understands is destructive both to himself  _and_  to Watson. 

So this is big, for him: trying to let go of self-neglect and find a more sustainable way of being in the world. But as with any major life change, the decision may be sudden but the implementation is gradual, often partial, and always comes with stall-outs and relapses. Watson’s furious when the case turns up–another first, because in the past he’s always welcomed a case as something that will keep Holmes away from the syringe for a few more days. We don’t know if Holmes ever tells Watson that he’s buried the syringe; but Watson’s a doctor, he must figure it out. He’s angry because he’s afraid the case is going to trigger a relapse–not into the drug habit, but into the habits of self-destruction that have become part of his investigative method. And, in fact, he’s right; as soon as Holmes has a case, he snaps right back into his usual mode.

All of this comes to a head in the “experiment” Holmes does with the poison. 

So let me say, first of all, that for Doyle, what Holmes does with this unidentified white powder is certainly on the edge, but it’s not so far outside the box as to be  _insane_. Back when Doyle was starting out in medicine, one of the ways doctors determined the lethality of a particular substance was to take it themselves and document their symptoms. And it’s worth remembering that this was probably the fastest and surest way to determine whether the powder was actually the cause of death. There’s no “send it to the lab for testing” in ACD canon. Holmes IS the lab. He knows more about forensic chemistry than anyone in England at this point, and of course he hasn’t brought his equipment to Cornwall. So unless they were going to test it on some unfortunate animal (as Holmes does in  _Study in Scarlet_ ), this is what would naturally occur to a guy who does not like to wait for results. Doyle did a similar experiment on himself with gelseminum, and wrote it up as an article. Holmes takes what Doyle would have considered sensible precautions: he ensures proper ventilation, reduces the dose, and uses the buddy system. The fact that it nearly kills both of them anyway is really a testament to the astonishing toxicity of this particular substance, though Holmes does berate himself afterwards for having ever thought this was a good idea.

The adaptation treats this very differently. Holmes’s experiment is presented as a return to the self-destructive craving for stimulation that’s now clearly a threat to his life. There are numerous visual cues that prime the modern viewer (the 1988 viewer, anyway) to read this as an analogy for Holmes’s drug use, which is a metaphor for the same death drive. The white powder, the spoon, and the burner evoke other TV representations of people preparing heroin for injection. Unlike in canon, and as with the drug use, Watson protests loudly and calls this “insane.” And yet, as with the drug use, Watson can’t talk him out of it and winds up becoming a party to it, because he’s afraid that left to himself, Holmes is going to kill himself doing this.

Now. What happens next is, from an artistic point of view, terrible. And yet, I’m going to argue, it is also extremely meaningful, and makes this episode so much more important than it would otherwise be.

In the canon story, of course, everything is from Watson’s point of view. So during the experiment, we get Watson’s interiority, but not Holmes’s. In an adaptation, you want to be able to deliver *more* than the original text does; and this episode attempts that by going into Holmes’s head and giving us  _his_  interiority. I 100% applaud this decision. It is a golden opportunity for character development, and for us to learn more about emotions that Holmes will never verbalize. Good for you, Gary, for seizing it.

And yet, this decision brings the production team smack up against the main problem with adapting “Devil’s Foot:” No stream of actual images can possibly REALLY be as scary what people supposedly experience when they’re on this drug. Doyle wisely avoids giving us the  _content_  of Watson’s hallucinations, and instead just tells us what Watson’s sensations are. But on film, the only way to get into Holmes’s head is to show us what’s in there. And there is definitely nothing you can represent–certainly nothing you can represent on network television in 1988–that wouldn’t be vastly disappointing to the viewers after all this buildup.

But in fact, the montage that represents Holmes’s RPD hallucinations isn’t vastly disappointing. It’s fucking DISASTROUS. It is a catastrophic cinematic fail. This is not only the worst part of this episode, it is the worst part of ANY of the episodes I have yet seen, and I’m including all of “Resident Patient.” It’s a mishmash of unconvincing 80s horror cliches, fake blood, crude attempts at visual distortion and disorientation, trippy closeups of Jeremy Brett’s goggle-eyed stare of horror, and–for some reason–random William Blake engravings:

That’s Nebuchadnezzar being driven mad by God, so I guess there is some thematic connection, and it’s also true that famous drug user Jim Morrison of the Doors got the name of his band from Blake’s  _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ so perhaps this is also a continuation of the drugs analgoybut…it’s bad. The whole thing is awful. I mean I laughed, out loud, hysterically, throughout. And I thought, you know what, this one time I wish I could bring in Moffat and Gatiss here and have them do this part, because this hallucinatory mind palace stuff is something they excel at, and at which the Granada team, or at least this particular Granada team, evidently *sucked.*

And yet.

If we get past the dreadful execution and consider the content, this hallucination is really important. We find out that what Holmes fears most at this point is death. And not just for what it’s going to do to him, but for what it will do to Watson.

So this montage starts out with a lot of shots of Holmes at the tomb where they have that first conversation about death. We also get the view of the sea from above, which reminds us that in a lot of ways this landscape replicates the Reichenbach setting: wild and sublime landscape, the most mountainous you can find in England, sheer cliff dropping down to a roiling body of water below. Sure enough, from there we get into the flashbacks to his fight with Moriarty from “Final Problem,” and to the shot of Holmes and Moriarty flying down the Reichenbach falls.

What they use at this point in the montage is various false-color versions of the footage they shot of Holmes and Moriarty falling off the cliff for the end of “Final Problem.” But of course what’s shown in that footage is something that never actually happened. Holmes never did go into the chasm. It’s Watson’s  _imagination_  of what happened. So when Holmes sees this, it’s not a flashback. He’s not remembering something he experienced. He is, for the first time,  _seeing his own death from Watson’s point of view_.

Let us remember that this drug forces people to confront things so terrifying that they will literally be driven insane if they contemplate them for too long.

So this means the following: 1) Holmes now recognizes the experience of watching your partner die as lethally terrifying. 2) This tells you something about how terrifying the prospect of Watson’s death is to him. 3) It also tells you something about how terrified he is of his own feelings about the fact that he inflicted this unspeakable horror on the person he loves most. 

In other words: Holmes finally gets it. He’s experiencing what it was like to be Watson during those three years, and he’s fucking terrified by it. And that’s going to change everything.

Because of the decision to go into Holmes’s head, we don’t get to see Watson using his last shred of “strength and sanity” to drag Holmes to safety. But we get something a lot more powerful instead. We hear Watson calling Holmes’s name, and we see Holmes, from Watson’s POV, writhing in convulsions while Watson frantically tries to get Holmes to recognize him:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt1-NfZwf)

And then he finally does:

And the first word out of his mouth is:

“JOHN!”

First name. First time.

I tell you, I got chills.

In the canon story, Holmes makes Watson a little speech about how dangerous and reckless this was and how sorry he is to have exposed him to all this danger. Watson treasures this moment because, he says, “I had never seen so much of his heart before.” As different as the adaptation is, this moment instantly captures the effect Doyle was striving for here. The first name tells you: this is a breakthrough moment. What’s happening here, and the visuals keep reminding us, is that they are re-playing the “Empty House” reunion scene, with the roles reversed and with a completely different kind of emotion from Holmes. In the reunion scene, Holmes also reaches out for Watson; but here, instead of saying, “I’ve come back to comfort you,” the same gesture says, “For the love of God, comfort me.” In “Empty House,” it’s Holmes bringing Watson around after his faint; here, it’s Watson trying to drag Holmes back to the land of the living. In “Empty House,” it’s Watson who has to grab onto Holmes to reassure himself that he’s real; here, it’s Holmes clinging to Watson for dear life:

So this is Holmes finishing up Watson’s journey. Watson thinks he’s pulled Holmes back from the brink; but for Holmes, it’s as if Watson’s come back from the dead. Because after all, though the adaptation doesn’t emphasize this as much as the story does, this little stunt could have killed Watson just as easily as it could have killed Holmes. This is Holmes learning that from now on, death is something that comes for  _both_  of them if it comes for one of them, and that he never wants Watson to go through that again.

And so when he apologizes, and says that this experience was “an unjustifiable experiment even for one’s self, and doubly so for a friend,” it’s not just about the poison. It’s about the Fall. Holmes finally understands enough about what he did to offer a truly meaningful apology. This is the moment that the gulf between them closes, and the relationship is truly repaired. And I only wish they would have stayed with Hardwicke a little longer to let us watch this sink in for Watson.

Instead, we have to content ourselves with the final conversation, after Watson has once again objected to Holmes’s decision to let a murderer go because he killed in revenge for the woman he loved. Well, that’s all traceable to Doyle’s biography and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. But they do something very interesting with this little snippet from the canon story:

**“I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done. Who knows?”**

So, when Holmes says “I have never loved,” well, the whole episode has been about showing us why that’s bullshit. He has loved, and the person he has loved is the person he’s saying this to. But the rest of it…Holmes is basically saying, if anyone ever harms the person I love, I will fuck them up. And in the adaptation, Watson gets to say it back: yeah, I would probably do the same in that situation. Now, “I will kill anyone who hurts you” is kind of a strange way to say “I love you;” but honestly, if you watch the scene, I think that’s basically what they both mean.  This is the ILY exchange. They’re closer now than ever before. Death is still with them. But now they’ve faced it together. They’ve both gone into that chasm and come back out. And they’re finally, now, on holiday. Together.


	22. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time: SILVER BLAZE

  


I really enjoyed “Silver Blaze,” but I find that I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. After the mortal peril, deep thoughts, and grand emotions of “Devil’s Foot,” it’s nice to have an episode that’s just fun, and that’s what “Silver Blaze” is. But we don’t really learn much that’s new about the characters, apart from the fact that Watson is way more into playing the ponies than Holmes realized, and that Holmes seems to have an affinity with horses but really doesn’t like dogs. Actually, that last part isn’t much of a surprise; the only dog in canon that I can think of that Holmes has ever liked is Toby from  _Sign of Four._ In  _Study in Scarlet,_ at their first meeting,Watson warns his future flatmate that he has a dog; but it’s never heard from again, and the RDJ adaptation is the only one I can recall where Watson’s “bull pup” actually appears. Apart from that, when a dog is introduced into a Sherlock Holmes story, it’s a good bet that Watson’s going to wind up shooting it later, probably because it’s trying to kill someone (“Copper Beeches,”  _Hound of the Baskervilles_ ). 

Anyway, what “Silver Blaze” does instead is give us a chance to luxuriate in all the little things we already know and love. Holmes’s confrontation with Silas Bourne is delicious, especially the way they both handle Silas’s stick. I could watch Sherlock Holmes bending loudmouthed assholes to his will and forcing them to do his bidding ALL DAY. You also have to love Holmes directing Watson to “linger”:

[Originally posted by cupidford](https://tmblr.co/Zcnr_m1vYdiif)

…though it’s hard to see what that was about, casewise, unless he just wanted a chance to go see a man about some sheep. Holmes’s irritation with his high-handed rich client is of course nothing new either ( “Scandal in Bohemia,” “Priory School,” etc.), but there are some nice little touches, like Holmes’s utter disgust for the vulgarly loud bell Ross uses to summon his servants:

[Originally posted by tearose77](https://tmblr.co/Zzm9AxjY6jCt)

…and the way he drops a ‘hint’ to Watson from across the table by baaaaaaing. (Watson gives him this look for a minute like, “Dude, I thought you were OFF the drugs,” before he gets it. We also learn that Holmes was tasting the evidence before Mulder made it cool:

[Originally posted by tearose77](https://tmblr.co/Zzm9AxjX3yjw)

Mmmmm…opium.

Anyway, so, that’s all fun and very entertaining, and you have to love the shots of them both out on the moors:

[Originally posted by tearose77](https://tmblr.co/Zzm9AxjXV5tX)

…but as I said, there isn’t a ton beneath the surface here. I was interested to see what I think is only our second shot of Holmes’s bedroom, which seems like a very cramped, lonely, and probably usually totally smoke-filled space; no wonder they spend most of their time in the common room. Speaking of which, this show always gives me serious breakfast envy. Watson evidently eats enough breakfast for about six people. Holmes, on the other hand, has basically never been shown eating on camera, and he refuses food at Colonel Ross’s too. I don’t know whether this is an adaptation thing or an acting choices thing or what. Does it say somewhere in the show bible that Holmes must never be shown ingesting food? Is that because he’s the Queen?

Anyway, so, like the dog, I have basically done nothing here, and I’m going to stop doing it and move on.


	23. A Chaotic Case: WISTERIA LODGE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to talk about Hammond’s thing with mirrors. And though I don’t plan to talk about Sherlock much in this one, my exposure to Sherlock does make me more interested in the question Hammond and his mirrors raise in “Wisteria Lodge”: When is a motif a symbol, and when is it just a trick? In other words, as the viewer, can we really tell the difference between something intended to create meaning, and something the director just happens to think is a cool effect? And does it really matter?

  * Back in Baker Street at the conclusion of their investigation, Holmes subtly warns Watson that he might want to leave this one out of the chronicles. “A chaotic case, my dear Watson,“ he says. "It will not be possible for you to present in that compact form which is dear to your heart.” “Wisteria Lodge” is _,_ in fact, less “compact” than most of the classic short stories–though it has a lot in common with  _A Study In Scarlet,_ in which the murders prove to be delayed acts of revenge carried out against the agents of a tyrannical government in a foreign land. But there are a lot of other things that have kept “Wisteria Lodge” out of the winners’ circle. For one thing, Doyle’s racism and xenophobia are more on display in this story than in many others; the “grotesque” elements of the case, in the canon story, derive largely from the exotic origins of the people involved in it, from the Tiger of San Pedro to the unnamed cook, who is presented as a kind of subhuman monster (gigantic in size, savagely violent, and unable to speak except in “grunts”). For another, Holmes is peripheral to the investigation; the only thing you can really say he accomplishes is the rescue of the governess, and even that is done by one of his agents. And of course, as in “Greek Interpreter,” the punishment of the miscreants is delayed.

Jeremy Paul addressed some of these problems in the screenplay. As in “Musgrave Ritual,” Paul does a good job of finding and expanding the most dramatically interesting aspects of the backstory; regarding his treatment of the cook, Paul doesn’t change the language used to describe him (poor Edward Hardwicke gets stuck talking about his “negroid” and “mulatto-like” features), but he does suppress the gratuitous “fetish” and the sacrifice in the kitchen. None of that has anything to do with the solution to the mystery; it’s purely an attempt to create the “grotesque” atmosphere that Holmes identifies in the first lines as the keynote to this adventure. Paul made the executive decision that the case plot itself is grotesque enough.

Peter Hammond, the director, had his own ideas about how to sustain that grotesque note; and that’s mostly what I’m going to talk about below. In particular, I’m going to talk about Hammond’s thing with mirrors. And though I don’t plan to talk about  _Sherlock_  much in this one, my exposure to Sherlock does make me more interested in the question Hammond and his mirrors raise in “Wisteria Lodge”: When is a motif a symbol, and when is it just a trick? In other words, as the viewer, can we really tell the difference between something intended to create meaning, and something the director just happens to think is a cool effect? And does it really matter?

So here’s what I’m talking about: if you look at the image I opened with, which is our first shot of Holmes and Watson, there’s enough going on visually that you could really go down the rabbit hole of interpretation before the case even starts. Holmes’s back is to Watson (and to us) and he’s facing the giant framed print of the Reichenbach Falls that now hangs over the mantelpiece; so while he’s talking to Watson, he’s Facing Into His Death. The mirror on the mantelpiece, meanwhile, which we would intuitively expect to reflect Holmes’s face, actually reflects Watson’s. So many doublings and reflections, you could be all day constructing meanings created by the two reflective things Holmes is facing here. I’m going to just single out one: this is our introduction to the word “grotesque,” and it suggests that Hammond has identified the uncanniness of the mirror as the way to visually “define the word grotesque.” There’s always something uncanny about mirrors. Even when a mirror functions perfectly, it doubles something that is supposed to be unique, i.e., your face. Mirrors often function as a gateway to another world, as in  _Alice in Wonderland_ or in [Cocteau’s  _Orphee_](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DwxsvEgOTaxA%26t%3D9s&t=Mjg5YzI2Y2MyMzM4NWU2NGFiM2M4N2YzOTQzOGQ3YTRmNmZmYTBiNixFaXhVQzlvNA%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161449587339%2Fa-chaotic-case-granada-holmes-wisteria-lodge&m=1). But mirrors also have the power to distort reality, or to reveal truths that elude the naked eye; and they can be used to make twins or doubles out of two distinct people (such as, for instance, Holmes and Watson).

In “Wisteria Lodge,” there are opportunities galore to exploit the doubling feature, since Holmes is given an unlikely doppleganger in Inspector Baynes of the Surrey constabulary. Indelibly played by Freddie Jones, Baynes looks and acts like every sad-sack, seedy, possibly corrupt backwater cop you’ve ever seen on TV; but in fact, he turns out to be an unsung Sherlock Holmes left to “stagnate in the provinces.” Holmes spends much of the episode veering between irritation and admiration as Baynes keeps scooping him–the unkindest cut of all being Baynes’s long and very complete deduction riff based on Senora Durango’s handwritten note. Jealousy is not a good look on Holmes, who is reduced to scraping a few trivial and useless dedcutions from the bottom of the deduction barrel. And here, it seems like the mirroring has a point: Hammond goes to some lengths to ensure that Holmes and Baynes mirror each other:

That mullioned window behind Holmes includes a pane which is a mirror instead of glass, in which you can see Baynes reflected. There’s another window just like it on the other side, in which we can see Holmes reflected while the camera focuses on Baynes:

Physically and personality-wise, the contrasts are obvious; but their methods are very similar (one suspects Baynes of being a closet Sherlock Holmes fan). So, all right, the mirrors emphasize that for the viewer. 

In general, the grotesquerie that Doyle attached to the cook is developed by Hammond in relationship to Murillo/Henderson, who doesn’t really appear in the canon story. Senora Durango, once she revives, speaks of the “rivers of blood” shed by Murillo in San Pedro, and Hammond seems to have taken that as his text; Murillo wears red jewelry and sees visitors in a red throne room which doubles as a theater for his devilish torture rituals:

In case you didn’t notice, Senora Durango is lying the middle of a cruciform spotlight. The candelabra and the black-robed Lucas who’s drawing her blood with the point of his knife complete the whole “black mass” vibe here. The alienation of Murillo is completed when, as he’s leaving the room, he announces that he’s immortal, and catches sight of his reflection:

Ooooh, distortion. Could it be that this Don Murillo has a soul as distorted and warped as this reflection? Stay tuned to find out!

So if we just focus on these instances, Hammond’s use of mirrors appears to be a well-thought-out storytelling strategy which provides visual reinforcement for some important aspects of the narrative. But the thing is, this is just a small sampling of the many, many, MANY mirror shots we have in his episode, some of which seem entirely irrelevant. There are mirrors EVERYWHERE in “Wisteria Lodge.” There’s one right outside the door to Murillo’s throne room, in which Holmes and Watson are caught after their hilariously ineffective pretextual interview with Murillo:

What’s the point of this? OK, Holmes and his nemesis are sharing a shot; but there are other ways to do that. Or this:

Could we maybe be looking at Holmes instead of at Holmes’s reflection in a spotty mirror? I mean, all right, this sets up a nice dissolve where Holmes’s cigarette smoke sort of becomes the smoke on the train where the Tiger of San Pedro will meet his end; but again, why the mirror?

Lest I seem to be unduly harsh on a director who (unlike some others who have worked on this series) at least is taking the time to create an aesthetic, let me cite in my defense some evidence I believe I have discovered that Brett also got impatient with the gratuitous mirror shots. These things are not easy to set up–there’s the problem of the film equipment getting caught in the reflection, for instance–and during the encounter with Baynes at Wisteria Lodge, Hammond has obviously gone to great trouble to maneuver Brett and Jones into just the right spots so that the mirroring will work. It must have occasioned some delay in the shooting…in fact one wonders whether Hammond spent more on antique mirrors than he did on anything else in this episode. At any rate, if you keep your eye on Holmes after he steps into his room to change during their conversation with Eccles at 221b, you will see that the first thing he does after taking off his dressing-gown…

…is try to throw it over the standing mirror that has sprouted over there by the doorway. He misses, and the thing drops to the floor. He then gets an armful of scarves and starts draping them over the mirror, almost completely covering it up, and finally picks up the gown from the floor and drapes it over the scarves, completely obscuring the mirror from view. TRY SHOOTING MY REFLECTION NOW, HAMMOND!

Ah well, it’s only a theory and I can’t prove it. But the point is: mirror shots proliferate so much in this episode that at the end of the day I have to believe that at least some of this was just a directorial flourish that had less to do with the story being told than with Hammond’s personal style. And it’s not that I mind–it’s nice that he HAS a style–but it’s a salutary reminder that not every pattern is deeply meaningful. Sometimes, all a motif means is that the director thought it was pretty. 

Paul does a good job of getting Holmes and Watson into the center of the action. Watson gets to pull the governess off the train himself, and the scene in which Watson and Holmes meet up at “Henderson’s” house (which Paul invents pretty much wholesale) is delectable, though one gets frustrated about Watson’s failure to perceive the urgency of the situation (dude, that woman trapped in the upper story who was signaling to you that she needed help SLIPPED YOUR MIND?). One cannot help but notice, however, that Paul seems to be writing with Burke and pre-1986 Brett in mind. Both Holmes and Watson are older and slower than the screenplay wants them to be, and you can really see it in the chase scenes (especially Watson chasing the cook–the cook is actually moving pretty slowly, but Watson is yet slower). 

At the same time, the screenplay makes this “chaotic case” somewhat more chaotic. I can’t understand, for instance, why Paul didn’t make it clearer that the whole point of Scott Eccles was to provide Garcia with an alibi. It can be inferred, but I think it’d have been easier on the viewer if someone had discussed that explicitly, as Holmes does in the story. The final shootout on the train is also so artistically done that it took me two viewing to figure out what the hell was going on. Nevertheless, I have to applaud Paul for that divergence from the original story; it’s more satisfying, and it also humanizes the cook by providing him with a rational motivation for his return trip to the house–to get the other pistol and complete the mission. 

So overall, I would say they did a pretty good job with some unpromising material. I’ll be interested to see what happens with “Bruce-Partington Plans,” another story I never liked much, but which will at least bring back Mycroft.





	24. Shadows and Fog: BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In my last review I mentioned that I’ve never really liked “Bruce Partington Plans.” But I found the episode so delightful that I had to go back and look at it…and now I can’t understand how I could ever have maligned it so.

In my last review I mentioned that I’ve never really liked “Bruce Partington Plans.” But I found the episode so delightful that I had to go back and look at it…and now I can’t understand how I could ever have maligned it so. HOW could I have failed to appreciate the story of Holmes and Watson’s very first amateur burglary? Or the story where Holmes tells Watson to write him down an ass? (Dogberry,  _Much Ado About Nothing_ , moving on.) Or the story where we learn that basically Mycroft is the British government’s Secret Human Google? Or the one where Holmes impulsively grabs Watson’s hand and says, “I knew you would not shrink at the last!” while showing more “tenderness” for him than Watson’s ever seen? Why did this story not become a Young Plaidder favorite?

Well, I have a few theories. One is that Young Plaidder knew nothing of international relations, and was therefore ill-equipped to understand either the mystery plot or what was at stake. Another is that Young Plaidder had very little experience with subway trains or public transportation in general. Doyle doesn’t stop to define any of his terms, so if you don’t know what the “points” are, for instance, it’s hard to see what’s going on in your head. Or maybe it was that there’s only one woman in this story and she’s not especially important. 

At any rate, especially on the day before James Comey, former director of the FBI, is going to go before the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify about his interactions with our possibly treasonous President, I am slightly more interested in a story which is really about protecting not just state secrets themselves, but the honor of the career civil servants who work with them. Poor overworked, underpaid Cadogan West dies trying to stop a venal, amoral, brother-betraying aristocrat from selling his country’s military secrets to an enemy spy. I salute you, Cadogan West. It’s a good thing you’re not real and still alive, or you would be going OUT OF YOUR MIND right now.

And the other thing that strikes me as a lot more ominous today is the fog.

Young Plaidder was very confused about the London fogs. By the time I was out of college I had been to London many times and never seen anything like the kind of fog Doyle describes at the beginning of this story. I had no idea that this was because of environmental regulations passed after the deadly London fog of 1952 killed thousands of people. 

I assumed that by “fog” Doyle meant the mist you saw rising off the ocean up in Maine in the early morning, or the low-lying white clouds that sometimes obscure the tops of skyscrapers. I did not know then that in Victorian London, “fog” was a euphemism for a dark and nasty cloud of dense, toxic, low-lying pollution whose main component was coal smoke. Coal was what most households in Victorian London were burning for warmth–gas was used mainly for light–and it made the city filthy. In the winter, climate conditions created some kind of inversion that kept a lot of this pollution trapped in the city. The London “fog” was, in other words, an almost unimaginably intense version of what we American children of the 1970s call “smog.” The reason Holmes has cabin fever at the beginning of “Bruce Partington Plans” is that when the “fog” was THAT bad, you just didn’t go out there. Not just because of all the criminal shenanigans Holmes is fantasizing about, but because breathing that shit deeply enough for long enough is gonna kill you.

It’s amazing, when you think about it, what has happened to the concept of the “London fog.” Since they are a thing of the past (for now), and thanks to film, TV, and songs like “A Foggy Day in London Town,” people now associate the phrase “London fog” with romance, nostalgia, beauty, and sophistication. London Fog is the name of a clothing company. You can get a London Fog Latte at Starbuck’s. (It has Earl Grey in it.) Someone write a fic where Holmes and Watson are suddenly catapulted to modern times and Watson is horrified to discover that people are DRINKING this stuff. ON PURPOSE. And PAYING for it. I mean, to him, it would be like ordering a Nuclear Waste Slurry. Extra points if it’s a coffeeshop AU.

But this is an interesting thing about ACD canon Holmes: he loves the London fog. Watson hates it; but for Holmes, it’s like his native element. Watson’s always glad to get the fuck away from London and its literally poisonous atmosphere, but Holmes is never impressed by the countryside. He’s a creature of the city. He loves all the things about London that horrify other people–the crime, of course, but also the dirt, the smells, the fumes, the noise. This is one of the things that makes the opening of “Bruce Partington Plans” so charming. His little speech about what an enterprising criminal could do in this fog is obviously fantasy–HE wants to be out there, slipping through the darkness, doing dark deeds and disappearing into the murk. 

The Granada episode does some wonderful things with this domestic opening scene. For one thing, it begins with Holmes singing in Latin. This was inspired by Watson’s observation, in the canon story, that Holmes has been entertaining himself during their seclusion by studying medieval music. Brett’s voice is not technically perfect at this point in his life, but I found it very moving to hear him sing. (I’ve seen  _My Fair Lady_ , of course, but Brett doesn’t do his own singing in that.) Watson low-key snarking at Holmes about how the paper contains all kinds of international news about war and revolution but “nothing you’d be interested in” is also a lovely moment. All the 221B stuff in this episode is top-drawer, including Mrs. Hudson. My only regret is that instead of Lestrade, who’s Mycroft’s sidekick in the canon story, they’ve substituted Inspector Bradstreet. I assume this was because Colin Jeavons was for some reason unavailable; but it’s too bad. He would have made it all even better. Charles Gray is all business in this one; but you can still see the Holmes spirit in him, especially at the moment when he’s promising his little brother to send him a list of all the known spies in the greater London area. A nice little touch added for the adaptation is the deciphering of this list when it finally arrives: “He writes like a drunken crab,” Holmes comments, tossing the note to Watson in hopes that as a doctor, he can make some sense of it. 

And then there’s the scene at the restaurant, which is a great moment for Hardwicke’s Watson. Burke would have approached the whole burglary thing very differently. Breaking into the house of a dangerous German spy who most likely murdered the last guy who came to his house uninvited and then dumped his body on the roof of a moving train? Sign me up! Can we start now? But Hardwicke’s Watson is more understated, less starry-eyed, concerned about his friend’s tendency to take the law into his own hands, and definitely starting to wonder whether he’s getting too old for this shit. So it’s more fun to watch Hardwicke’s Watson walking into a restaurant carrying a bag of burglar’s tools and CLEARLY none too happy about it; and it also means more, to us and to Holmes, when he finally caves and agrees to come along on this insane joyride. No matter how long they’ve been doing this together, Brett’s Holmes is always just a little anxious whenever he asks Watson if he wants to come along, and he’s always so genuinely pleased when Watson says yes. It’s like it’s their first date, every time. And a burglary first date is, apparently, the best kind. Holmes is so happy when he’s breaking into other people’s houses with Watson at his side. It’s very sweet. And perhaps a little bit kinky.

Nabbing Colonel Valentine is also a great moment. At it happens, I just re-watched the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson  _Much Ado About Nothing,_ and I love the “write me down an ass” line. But I do have to ask: what “bird” was Holmes expecting? Clearly Colonel Valentine is the only suspect left by the time they set this trap. And what a self-absorbed sorry little sonofabitch he is, too. Holmes, after he finds out that Sir James is dead, wonders whether it was illness or suicide. I personally wonder why Holmes doesn’t consider the possibility that Valentine killed him. It would have made the story too long, I suppose. At any rate, again, Holmes’s contempt for aristocrats is precious to me. If they could bottle that and turn it into a fragrance I would wear it. I particularly love Holmes’s reaction when he asks Valentine, to make the letter more realistic, what his “terms” would be if he were holding out for more money, and Valentine answers right away.

Anyway, so “Bruce Partington Plans” loomed out of the fog to steal my heart. I think my next move will be to watch  _The Sign of Four_ , which evidently was made between the two Return series. Gonna have to brace myself for that one.


	25. Men Behaving Even More Remarkably Badly: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I found out that Trevor Bowen, who was responsible for the HOB script, also wrote the screenplay for “Frances Carfax,” I feared the worst. But it turns out that like Frances Carfax’s burial, my eulogy for this show was premature. Brett still looks like he’s been through hell, but he now seems to have come out the other side. His face is ravaged; but otherwise, his Holmes seems much more his old self. The voice is back, the energy is (partly) back, and in general there’s just a lot more acting going on. This is also a great episode for Hardwicke; I haven’t been this interested in his Watson since “Devil’s Foot.” I even like Trevor Bowen’s definitely not by-the-book adaptation…until the last five minutes, when it STABBED ME in the HEART.

I’d like to thank everyone who encouraged me, in the comments on my writeup of  _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , to forge ahead with the  _Case-Book_  episodes. To be honest, I didn’t get a lot of enjoyment out of either HOB or  _The Sign of Four._ When I found out that Trevor Bowen, who was responsible for the HOB script, also wrote the screenplay for “Frances Carfax,” I feared the worst. But it turns out that like Frances Carfax’s burial, my eulogy for this show was premature. Brett still looks like he’s been through hell, but he now seems to have come out the other side. His face is ravaged; but otherwise, his Holmes seems much more his old self. The voice is back, the energy is (partly) back, and in general there’s just a lot more acting going on. This is also a great episode for Hardwicke; I haven’t been this interested in his Watson since “Devil’s Foot.” I even like Trevor Bowen’s definitely not by-the-book adaptation…until the last five minutes, when it STABBED ME in the HEART.

This episode also had a good director, and it really shows. Madden went on to make feature films, and you can see a lot of care and attention and creativity that went into shooting this which was just completely absent in HOB. I particularly love what he did with the fight in the bank–and I love the cut from Holmes turning around with a stricken look on his face as Lady Frances Carfax disappears AGAIN to this shot right here of these two lunkheads sitting silent and ashamed in 221B while Holmes tries–to borrow a phrase made immortal by @lyndsayfaye–to ‘murder them with his eyeballs.’

@lyndsayfaye coined that phrase in[ this post about “The Solitary Cyclist,”](http://lyndsayfaye.tumblr.com/post/101180559089/this-is-seriously-one-of-the-best-moments-in-the) and in fact I saw a lot of ways in which Bowen’s adaptation brings this story into close relationship with “Solitary Cyclist.” I will be talking about that behind ye olde ‘read more’ tag. In this version of “Frances Carfax,” we see Holmes and Watson once again kicking into overdrive to try to save a woman from destruction at the hands of a male predator; but it doesn’t work out so very well this time around. Each of the three men in this image is driven, at some point in this episode, to say, “I blame myself.” And on one level, they should. But on another level, it’s really not their fault. In this story, they’re in a universe where the rules Holmes and Watson played by in “Solitary Cyclist” no longer work–because, despite some of the things Bowen’s done to it, this story is still much more pessimistic about female agency than “Solitary Cyclist” was. 

Bowen’s primary innovation is to make Lady Frances Carfax interesting. Doyle was a lot more interested in the gruesome details of her near-death experience than in Lady Frances herself. In the canon story, the lady has already vanished before Holmes gets the case. Here, we and Watson get to know and like Lady Frances Carfax before all this hideous shit goes down. All Lady Frances wants is to live an independent and meaningful life. And yet, she is surrounded by men who are trying to stop her–her asshole aristocratic brother, Holy Peters, and this bearded and behatted stalker who, from a distance, looks not unlike the disguised Mr. Carruthers.

Yes, Green is a stalker. Bowen’s script makes that clear. Lady Frances is given several opportunities to make it quite clear to Green that she wants nothing more to do with him. He ignores all of them, continues to follow her, and actually tracks her down on a train after her ‘disappearance’ and proposes to her–and is flatly rejected. He does seem to be sincerely concerned about her welfare and he does help save her life. All the same: what do we call a man who refuses to take no for an answer, and keeps hounding the woman who told him “no” because he’s convinced that since she loved him once and he’s “waited fifteen years” she MUST eventually come around if he just follows her around for long enough? We call him a stalker.

This is something that I actually really like about this adaptation, because it rescues Watson from much of the humiliation that is dealt out to him by the canon story. “Frances Carfax” is one of the stories responsible for the Stupid Watson myth. In canon, as in “Solitary Cyclist,” Holmes sends Watson out on a solo mission; and this time, Watson does even more remarkably badly, finally embroiling himself in a fistfight with Green from which he has to be rescued by Holmes (who is disguised as a French worker, because of course he is). Watson does a number of things in this story which are really uncharacteristically stupid even for ACD canon, including ignoring Holmes’s request for a description of Schlessinger’s left ear. 

In Bowen’s adaptation, Watson is still kind of an idiot; but he’s not stupid. When Watson fucks up in this story–and he does, epically, at the bank–it’s because he’s trying to protect his friend, and directly confronting Green is the only way he can see of doing it. Unlike the canon story, Bowen’s script gives Watson excellent reasons to believe that Green is the abductor. Not only does Watson probably have flashbacks to Carruthers every time he looks at the guy, but he has seen how Lady Frances reacts to him. He knows she wants him to stay away and that he refuses to do so. He recognizes Green, in other words, as the stalker that he is; and it is completely reasonable for him to infer on that basis that Green is the villain of the piece.

But Green isn’t the only man in this story who rides roughshod over Lady Frances’s autonomy. After all, in the canon story, at least someone connected with Lady Frances has asked Holmes to take the case. In Bowen’s script, nobody asks Holmes to intervene–not even Watson. Watson, who I will point out seems to be the only man Lady Frances knows who has ever respected her autonomy, has simply befriended her while on holiday and written to Holmes about her. It’s Holmes who decides, based on his silent games with his little figures and his perusal of the daily papers, that Lady Frances needs their help. Indeed, from an objective point of view, in the adaptation Lady Frances doesn’t “disappear;” she just leaves the hotel without telling anyone where she’s going. One imagines that if she had stuck around to see Holmes and Watson burst in on her and tell her she’s in mortal danger, she would have yelled at both of them to get out of her life too. 

So what would have been the right decision in “Solitary Cyclist”–to go after the guy who’s obviously stalking her–is the wrong decision in “Frances Carfax,” because unlike Violet Smith, Lady Frances Carfax can’t be trusted to know what’s good for her. Holmes paints a picture of a world in which women alone are constantly besieged by opportunistic criminals against whose wiles they prove defenseless. Watson goes on stubbornly attributing independence and agency to her; but in this universe, he’s wrong. Noting that she was alone and apparently not under anyone’s power when she appeared at the bank, Watson says, “She was free.” Holmes knows better: “A person may walk off the edge of a cliff because she has been invited to look at the moon.”

And yet, at the same time, Holmes is also wrong. He realizes that after the debacle at the bank: by trying to save Lady Frances from the trap he foresees, he’s actually pushed her into it. After all, think about what she sees when she looks over the balcony. Green is tearing into Watson; the police are all over them; and while her one protector is unable to assist, a man she’s never met before goes charging up the stairs after her. Of course she runs. She doesn’t know Holmes from Adam; all she knows is that he’s with Green and he wants to grab her. 

So in some ways, Bowen’s script is more like a  _Sherlock_  episode than a typical Granada adaptation. The characters and the main events of the plot are preserved, but integrated into a very different and more modern kind of story. And I have to say that until we get to the graveside drama, I was totally on board with this. It’s a shame to lose the Turkish bath conversation; but although it’s slightly hokey, Holmes’s sinister play with the figurines is compelling in a different way. After the lethargy of HOB, it’s such a relief to see Holmes snapping into action, yelling for Mrs. Hudson, firing off his telegram, and setting the whole beehive a-buzzing. Watson gets genuinely invested in Lady Frances and makes us genuinely care about her. (This also raises the possibility that Holmes goes out there at least partly because he’s worried Watson may be a little TOO into her, but I’m not going to go down that road at this time.) Including the Earl as a character was a fantastic decision; it gives us a chance to see who Frances is and what she’s been fighting all her life, AND it gives us another chance to watch Holmes school an asshole aristocrat, which he does beautifully.

Bowen’s most inspired invention, though, was definitely the fight at the bank. I love everything about this. Holmes is up there on the balcony, effortlessly spinning out his story for the bank manager, and he looks back to Watson for backup as he so often has…and Watson’s not there. And Brett’s reaction to seeing Watson making a beeline for Green on the floor below is priceless. On the one hand, he has this look of absolute horror as he foresees the entire debacle about to unfold. And yet, there’s this fatalism about it even as he tries to stop him; because Holmes knows Watson’s gonna Watson and this impending disaster is in fact the Watsoniest thing Watson’s done in his whole life and what force on earth can stop him? This is basically everything he loves Watson for: his loyalty; his love for his friends; his willingness to put himself on the line for the people he cares about; his single-minded determination to do the right thing at all costs. Watson being Watson happens to be the worst thing that could happen at this particular moment. But part of that agonized expression on Holmes’s face is the pain of being torn between his knowledge of how disastrous this is and his affection for all the parts of Watson that are leading him to commit this blunder. This is all foreshadowed, in fact, in the opening scenes with the figurines, when Holmes picks up what appears to be a child’s building block, looks at it, and says, “Watson, you’re a brick.” Bricks are dense. They are, however, also sturdy, trusty, and to be relied upon; and you can’t build anything without them.

So I love all that, and the aftermath in 221B, as Holmes looks at them thinking, “What in God’s name am I to do with these two IDIOTS?” And the rest of the investigation has some fantastic moments. I particularly love Holmes lecturing Green about being patient because they have to wait for the law and due process to have their day–and then, as soon as Green’s gone, telling Watson get the gun, we’re doing this the Baker Street way. “You’re a common burglar,” says Peters; Holmes replies, “My friend is also a dangerous ruffian.” Which is actually, in this episode anyway, sort of true. The little scene later that night when Watson tries to help Holmes think it through and Holmes snaps and stalks off is also very touching. I am even willing to overlook the echoing voiceover that triggers Holmes’s epiphany (STOP DOING THAT) and the fact that they went Extra Melodrama for the rescue from the coffin by staging it at the actual gravesite.

And then we get to the ending.

What happens to Lady Frances at the end of this episode is truly awful. The woman who ran herself into all this danger by holding on fiercely to her independence is now apparently so damaged by the chloroform and suffocation that she can no longer speak or walk without assistance. Instead, she’s a dependent, apparently in the sole care of Green–the man she was trying to get away from when she first “disappeared.” Watson is characteristically looking on the bright side, saying there’s “every hope for a full recovery,” but Holmes is not encouraged. He sees this case as a failure, and he’s right. They’ve saved her life; but Lady Frances, *as* Lady Frances, appears to have disappeared forever. And yet, there’s really nothing he could have done. The deck was always stacked against Holmes, and against poor Lady Frances–because she has too much autonomy, and yet at the same time not enough. She’s smart enough and strong enough to resist all the pressure and live her own life; and yet she’s also been made, somewhat arbitrarily, gullible enough to fall for Peters’s act. In most of the earlier stories about male predators, the predator is working without the victim’s knowledge or consent. Here and in “Illustrious Client,” Holmes and Watson can’t respect the victim’s desires, because what the victim desires is her own destruction. Holmes and Watson are pretty good players by now, but you can’t beat the house.

The episode ends with Lady Frances sitting in her invalid chair, with Green sitting behind her, looking over her shoulder. It’s a bright and sunny scene, but it’s also ominous. She doesn’t look very aware of her surroundings; he doesn’t seem to have any way of interacting with her except silently waiting in the shadows as he did before.

I wanted to be mad at Bowen about this, so I looked back at the original story to see whether Lady Frances actually makes a full recovery. I discovered that there is actually no information about that. Watson pulls her back from the brink of death, but we don’t know anything about what happens to her afterward. So in the end, I don’t think I can be mad at him, much as I hate this ending. It’s tragic, and it makes me angry. But in a way, it’s a commentary on Doyle’s own treatment of Lady Frances, who disappears from the narrative as soon as Holmes and Watson are done saving her. Bowen at least continues the story and gives Holmes an opportunity to take a good hard look at his own role in this debacle, and a hard stare into the future at his consequences. 


	26. Some Of You Rich Men: THE PROBLEM OF THOR BRIDGE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeremy Paul adapted “Naval Treaty,” “Speckled Band,” “Wisteria Lodge,” and “Musgrave Ritual”; and if you look at his track record you can see that he has a healthy respect for the canon stories but is also not afraid to, let’s say, enhance them by making some significant changes (as he does in “Musgrave Ritual” and “Wisteria Lodge”). In his expansion of “Thor Bridge,” Paul gives us loads of what has worked for this show so far: more and better Watson, Holmes facing off against asshole millionaire clients, and–of course!–Jeremy Brett handling paper.

  


Look, it’s Holmes and Watson finally sharing a cell together!

Well, it’s not what it looks like. They haven’t been finally convicted of burglary; they’ve just stepped into an empty cell, while visiting Miss Grace Dunbar in prison, so that Watson can pitch his theory of who killed Mrs. Gibson and how to Holmes. This conversation completely does not happen in canon; it is one of the many little tasty bon-bons offered to the faithful Granada fan by veteran adapter Jeremy Paul’s script. Paul adapted “Naval Treaty,” “Speckled Band,” “Wisteria Lodge,” and “Musgrave Ritual”; and if you look at his track record you can see that he has a healthy respect for the canon stories but is also not afraid to, let’s say, enhance them by making some significant changes (as he does in “Musgrave Ritual” and “Wisteria Lodge”). In his expansion of “Thor Bridge,” Paul gives us loads of what has worked for this show so far: more and better Watson, Holmes facing off against asshole millionaire clients, and–of course!–Jeremy Brett handling paper:

[Originally posted by hemlock-in-the-cocktails](https://tmblr.co/ZzAsQm1csY9B0)

I just imagine these conversations happening during shooting: “How’s Jeremy feeling today?” “He seems in pretty good spirits.” “Great. Call props, tell them to get him some more paper.”

[Originally posted by granada-brett-crumbs](https://tmblr.co/ZgvRKh2IahL_e)

I love the way he waggles Gibson’s letter at Watson, like, come and get it, you know you want it. Like this is his courtship ritual. “Note how this  _rara avis_  turns his back on his intended mate, tempting the other bird forward by agitating an envelope’s open flap in place of the colorful tailfeathers this species regrettably lacks.”

It all adds up to a pretty entertaining experience, though you wouldn’t put it on par with, say, “Blue Carbuncle” or “Second Stain” or even “Speckled Band.” “Thor Bridge” is just not a great story, and the solution has a number of problems, all of which are unfortunately visible in Holmes’s reconstruction at the end:

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs1zoFK2U)

That gun totally does not hit the parapet in such a way as to make the mark that they then pretend to discover in the next shot. But don’t blame the props department; it couldn’t. Physics just doesn’t work that way. Plus, since in the adaptation they have Watson actually  _unload_  the pistol before Holmes puts it  _to his head,_  and since Holmes doesn’t actually fire the pistol before releasing, they’re not really replicating the conditions under which the original shot took place anyway. But the solution of “Speckled Band” is cheez whiz too, and “Speckled Band” is still a better story. Why? Well, “Speckled Band” is (for Doyle) a fairly original story with well-individualized characters, whereas “Thor Bridge” could also have been titled “Jane Eyre With Guns _.”_ Seriously, the setup in “Thor Bridge” is basically the same as in  _Jane Eyre–_ rich man saddled with hot-blooded tropical wife he now hates hires young English governess, then tries to get with her even though he’s still married–only Jane is hot as well as intellectually & spiritually gifted, Bertha has access to the gun room, and Mr. Rochester is basically Donald Trump.

Bad news first: as far as the women go, there’s nothing of interest here. From that point of view, this story is just a collection of well-worn tropes, including the “it’s OK that women don’t have political power of their own because they can shape the world by influencing powerful men” trope. You watch Grace Dunbar pleading with Gibson to use his wealth and power for good, and all you can think is, “Sweetheart, that doesn’t work for Ivanka and it ain’t gonna work for you.” 

Maria Gibson’s character in the ACD story never gets beyond the Hot-Blooded Latina stereotype–of course she’s crazy! she’s from the tropics!–and neither Paul nor the production team is at all interested in complicating that:

Maria Gibson is in red  _every single time that she’s on camera,_ whereas Grace Dunbar always wears white:

To be honest, it would be hard to develop Maria Gibson, because if she were actually a coherent three-dimensional character we would reject her behavior as completely implausible. In “Norwood Builder” Jonas Oldacre doesn’t actually  _kill himself_  in order to frame McFarlane. Who does that? Nobody rational. If you want revenge, what sense does it make to set up your scheme so that you die before you have a chance to enjoy it? Only for a character who’s basically a tossed salad of Anglo-antifeminist stereotypes could this plot ever pass muster. Because the only answer to the question, “If she hates her that much, why doesn’t she just  _shoot_  Grace Dunbar, and  _then_  kill herself?” is, “Who knows why these crazy dames do what they do, amirite?”

No, all the real charm in this story has to do with Holmes’s battle with his extremely troublesome client, and the way Watson keeps stepping in to help him out. At one point, Gibson offers to punch Holmes, and Watson is getting up and ready to throw down, when Holmes just waves a hand and says, “Don’t be noisy.” And really, that’s exactly what you wish someone would say to our 45th president, a hundred and eighty-three times a day for the rest of his life. 

Now, comparing Gibson to the Buttercup In Chief is slightly unfair to Gibson in that Gibson can use the English language competently and has actually been successful in business. But Gibson is the same kind of rich asshole who thinks rules are for the little people, and who bullies even the people who are trying to help him. Also, he’s a sexual predator. The canon story includes a conversation about this which is, compared to the way these issues are handled in the earlier stories, pretty explicit. Holmes tells Gibson straight up that whatever he felt for Dunbar, he shouldn’t have told her about it, since she was “under his protection.” And here’s Gibson’s response:

**“Well, maybe so,” said the millionaire, though for a moment the reproof had brought the old angry gleam into his eyes. “I’m not pretending to be any better than I am. I guess all my life I’ve been a man that reached out his hand for what he wanted, and I never wanted anything more than the love and possession of that woman. I told her so.”**

**“Oh, you did, did you?”**

**Holmes could look very formidable when he was moved.**

**“I said to her that if I could marry her I would, but that it was out of my power. I said that money was no object and that all I could do to make her happy and comfortable would be done.”**

**“Very generous, I am sure,” said Holmes with a sneer.**

**“See here, Mr. Holmes. I came to you on a question of evidence, not on a question of morals. I’m not asking for your criticism.”**

**“It is only for the young lady’s sake that I touch your case at all,” said Holmes sternly. “I don’t know that anything she is accused of is really worse than what you have yourself admitted, that you have tried to ruin a defenceless girl who was under your roof. Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences.”**

Paul obviously realized that the best thing about “Thor Bridge” is watching Holmes teach Gibson this very lesson. So instead of having Gibson just take a walk around the block and then come back to Baker Street, as in the canon story, Paul expands the antagonistic stage of Gibson and Holmes’s relationship. Gibson does not in fact come back that day; and this gives us the novel opportunity of watching Holmes starting to fear that his bluff has, for once, failed. He’s so upset with himself for losing the first decent case he’s had in months…and then Watson saves him by pointing out that Dunbar is really the one who needs help, and offering to help wangle them a meeting with her. Their confrontation in Dunbar’s cell, though entirely invented by Paul, fits in seamlessly with the rest of the episode and is delightful to watch. Also delightful (and invented by Paul) is the moment where Gibson’s secretary finally comes around to the museum to invite Holmes down to Thor Bridge and Holmes asks if they’re going to send the motorcar for him. Demand the finest, honey! You’re worth it!

But it’s the Extra Watson that saves this episode in the home stretch. In that scene in the cell, we see Holmes actually listening to Watson’s theory without condescension or sarcasm; he really does consider him his colleague at this point, and is willing to believe that Watson might be able to solve a problem that baffles him. And even though Watson’s theory is wrong, and Holmes knows immediately that it’s wrong, he recognizes the one thing Watson’s demonstrating here that he’s been lacking: imagination. Watson’s identification of the killer makes no sense (why, if Gibson killed his wife to frame Dunbar, would he then ruin a plan that was going extremely well by calling in Sherlock Holmes to save the woman he framed?); but by changing this from a story about the murder of Maria Gibson into a story about the framing of Grace Dunbar, he’s shown Holmes the way to the real solution. What you see from Brett as Holmes recognizes that is new, and it’s complicated. In his “Watson, you put me to shame!” you can feel both admiration and anger. All along he’s wanted Watson to reach this level; but Holmes still wants to be the one in charge. Maybe that’s why he dumps Watson’s revolver in the pond. (Hardwicke’s reactions throughout that whole scene are priceless.)

Anyway, the real tragedy of “Thor Bridge,” alas, is that Gibson doesn’t learn that lesson, at least not permanently. Holmes’s sparring, delicious as it is, is basically just a temporary inconvenience. Gibson ends the story with everything he wants: his wife is dead, Grace Dunbar is cleared, and the final shot of them driving back over Thor Bridge together certainly suggests they will “join forces. Alas. But at least we’ve got Holmes and Watson back, along with the only other romance that matters on this show: Jeremy Brett and paper.

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs1syhe04)

(Yes, I know that last gif is actually from “Wisteria Lodge.” No letters please.)


	27. Sister Act: SHOSCOMBE OLD PLACE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of surprises in “Shoscombe Old Place,” because about 75% of this episode is extrapolation. In most ways, the extrapolations improve the story, which I evidently found one of the least memorable.

Continuing what seems to be a Hardwicke-era running gag about crappy food at country inns, Jeremy Paul’s script for “Shoscombe Old Place” sends Holmes and Watson to a remote country inn where the landlord proudly serves up a kettle of fresh fish stew. They both look into it; they look at each other; and Holmes says, “These are deep waters, Watson. Deep and rather dirty.”

Holmes does actually say this in the canon story, but in a completely different context. It’s a nice little surprise for the insiders. There are a lot of surprises in “Shoscombe Old Place,” because about 75% of this episode is extrapolation. In most ways, the extrapolations improve the story, which I evidently found one of the least memorable. “Shoscombe Old Place” is the first of these episodes where the title actually recalled nothing to my mind. I had not even a vague memory of what happens in that story. So I looked it up, and started reading it, and a few paragraphs in I was like, “Oh, yeah, dead sister, OK, I remember.” 

And that’s the problem with the canon story: the solution is telegraphed pretty clearly pretty early (especially for readers who have seen  _Psycho_ ). It doesn’t take much investigating to confirm it, either. All in all, I have to give Paul props for turning a pretty blah story into a really enjoyable episode, with one very interesting surprise at the end.

Paul follows what I have come to think of as the [Norwood Builder Rules](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/159643212814/company-and-moral-support-granada-holmes-the): 1) Everything’s better with more Watson and 2) all the changes you make should come from canon. Watson’s expanded role in this one provides a lot of the entertainment. Holmes himself is vastly entertained by the fact that Watson knows so much about racing, and is both sincerely grateful to him for offering up his story of knowledge and also kind of dragging him for it. Watson providing a diversion while Holmes cases the joint is also entertaining; I mean none of what happens during that sequence is really that original, but it’s fun, and their reunion behind the tree on the lawn is a great little tidbit. Giving Holmes the chance to swipe some hairs from the brush allows Paul to actually make the microscope hair-and-fiber bit at the opening of “Shoscombe Old Place” relevant to the solution of the mystery. The crypt scenes are spooky enough, though frankly I found the giant spider on Lady Beatrice’s corpse  _de trop_. The red herring about Sam Brewer’s disappearance is a good move in that it camouflages the real issues for a little bit longer than the story does. (Let me just point out that in the canon story, instead of “in debt,” Doyle repeatedly has everyone say “in the hands of the Jews.” Like, every time. Thanks, Doyle.) 

But the most interesting thing to me about this is the change made to the impersonation plot. In order to prepare us for what is potentially a highly irregular/corrupt ending–we don’t find out for sure what Holmes does about going to the police, but we do find out that both Watson and Mrs. Hudson profited from the fact that Shoscombe Prince was able to run in the race after all–Paul takes the time to establish that Sir Robert does actually really love his sister and feels real grief over her death. We also know he’s carrying on with his sister’s maid Carrie. In the canon story, Lady Beatrice is impersonated by an older man, an actor who’s married, if memory serves, to Carrie. In the adaptation, they handle this very differently. Early in the episode, a young lad comes by to ask Sir Robert for work in the stables:

[Originally posted by rookheeya](https://tmblr.co/Z9tw-v1d-CtBG)

You know, I was looking at this going, that’s a very pretty actor they found for this very small part. He kind of reminds me of a young Jude Law…and then I get to the closing credits:

D’OHH.

Yes, my friends, that’s Jude Law, future Watson to Downey’s Holmes, future Bosie to Fry’s Wilde, playing the very attractive stable lad who is inveigled by SIr Robert and Carrie into impersonating Lady Beatrice–and who is Dramatically Unveiled by Holmes:

Oh my God, it’s the Young Pope!

Casting Jude Law as the stable lad who dresses up as Lady Beatrice makes this an entirely different kind of drag act. Joe the stable lad is really rather beautiful here; and in the next scene, when Holmes is getting Sir Robert to fess up, Joe’s crying in the background while Carrie comforts him. During one of the flashback scenes from Sir Robert’s confession, we see Robert sitting in the crypt, crying over Beatrice’s coffin. Joe is behind him, and puts a hand on his shoulder gently for a few moments before finally withdrawing it. 

OK, we know Sir Robert, despite being a ladies’ man, has never married; and we know he’s already got a thing going with Carrie. The question arises: just how close did this trio get during the time of the deception? 

It is unanswerable, of course; and who knows, maybe the only reason I’m asking it is that the Unveiling of Jude Law in this episode reminds me so much of this:

[Originally posted by sherlockloovesjohn](https://tmblr.co/Zskdle2LGseW0)

Honestly, I feel like the farther I get into this series the more I understand what’s going on in Mark Gatiss’s brain. I’m not sure I like it; but it does seem to me as if both the “Shoscombe Old Place” and “Frances Carfax” episodes of this series contribute significantly to “The Abominable Bride,” just as (I believe) [the Granada “Musgrave Ritual” (another Jeremy Paul episode, now that I think about it) is somewhere at the murky bottom of “The Final Problem.”](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/160239615654/and-so-under-granada-holmes-musgrave-ritual)

At the end of the day, well, this episode doesn’t make spring bloom again for me; but it’s entertaining, and certainly it’s a big improvement on the canon story. I love the final scene in 221B, with Holmes getting in his digs about Watson’s gambling and then finding out that Mrs. Hudson plays the ponies too. Basically, after  _Hound of the Baskervilles_ , anything that doesn’t outrage my sensibilities and break my heart is a win.


	28. God Help Us: THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the adaptation, “Boscombe Valley” loses some of the canon story’s youthful exuberance; but it also gains some depth. In particular, I think, Hawkesworth uses this opportunity to give us a closer look at Holmes and Watson’s dynamics, and at the complexity of Holmes’s unofficial position.

One has the impression that Hawkesworth might have decided, back in the early 80s, to hold “Boscombe Valley” in reserve. It’s a comparatively early story, written back when Doyle and Holmes were still making their reputations; and it’s longer and more complex than many others, so it lends itself better to episodic TV. But whereas delay was, as I’ve lamented, pretty much fatal for  _Hound of the Baskervilles_ , waiting till this late in the series actually enriches “Boscombe Valley.” 

In ACD canon, “Boscombe Valley” is the first story in which Holmes makes the decision to let a murderer go. Jefferson Hope of  _A Study in Scarlet_  and Jonathan Smalls in  _The Sign of Four_  are turned over to the authorities (and Tonga is killed). “Boscombe Valley” is the first murder case in _Adventures_  (the three preceding stories are “Scandal in Bohemia,” “Red-Headed League,” and “A Case of Identity”). But in the Granada adaptation, we’ve already seen Holmes dispensing his own definition of justice to numerous murderers, either as vengeance (“Speckled Band,” “Greek Interpreter”) or as mercy ( “Abbey Grange,” “Devil’s Foot”). Similarly, “Boscombe” is set pretty soon after Watson’s marriage to Mary, and written at a time when Doyle was still attempting to acknowledge Mary and the marriage ("Boscombe Valley” begins with Watson and Mary actually talking to each other, instead of, say, a couple lines about how Mary is off visiting her mother even though she’s an orphan), whereas in the Granada series, by the time “Boscombe Valley” happens, Holmes and Watson have been living together for years and we know that Watson doesn’t marry Mary. 

So in the adaptation, “Boscombe Valley” loses some of the canon story’s youthful exuberance; but it also gains some depth. In particular, I think, Hawkesworth uses this opportunity to give us a closer look at Holmes and Watson’s dynamics, and at the complexity of Holmes’s unofficial position. 

So, first of all, the whole opening of the story has to be redone because the canon story opens with Watson having breakfast with Mary and getting a telegram from Holmes. Now, it is sad to lose this, because…I mean look at this telegram:

**“Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave Paddington by the 11.15.”**

What a little marvel of compression. All of Holmes is in this telegram. His insecurity about what Watson’s marriage means for their partnership (“Have you a couple of days to spare?”), his compensatory bragging (look, they’re wiring me from the west of England now), his not very subtle plea for Watson’s time and attention (“Shall be glad if you will come with me”), his enticement ( “air and scenery perfect”), and finally, the admission that all of this entreating and cajoling was purely an act, because you know and I know, Watson, that you are about to leave your wife at the table and rush out to the west of England with me whether it’s convenient or not (“Leave Paddington by the 11:15″).

But, as I think I said in my review of “Bruce Partington Plans,” one of the consequences of Hawkesworth’s indifference to publication order is that Holmes can never quite take Watson for granted no matter how long they’ve been together. Brett’s Holmes always seems to be really anxious about whether Watson will accept these invitations; and yet at the same time, he also knows that Watson’s never once turned him down. In “Boscombe Valley” the little courtship dance we see in that telegram is drawn out until its workings become obvious to both Watson and the viewer. 

[Originally posted by tremendousdetectivetheorist](https://tmblr.co/Z7gvaf2IlJQrA)

Holmes actually hunts Watson down while he’s in the middle of what appears to be a fishing trip, goes through the performance of asking him if he wants to come, pretends he’ll be OK with it if Watson says he’d rather finish his holiday, and then–once he secures Watson’s consent–reveals that he’s already got their train tickets. Exasperated by this presumption, Watson will be even more exasperated when he discovers that Holmes arranged their accommodations before he even went out to invite him on this jaunt. 

So Watson’s quite aware of how he’s been played; and he makes his peace with it. And this is just one of those wonderful nuances that get into the Holmes/Watson relationship over the course of the Granada series. Holmes’s line about the fresh air killing him–which is not in the canon story–is consistent with Holmes’s canon characterization (ACD canon Holmes, as I have observed, loves London pollution and hates country air). But it also continues a little sub-narrative about Holmes, Watson, and holidays that they’ve been developing since “Musgrave Ritual.” 

Watson and Holmes have completely incompatible ideas about what constitutes a holiday. The one time their ideas on the subject converged was when Holmes decided to invite Watson on tour of the Continent, and that’s only because Moriarty was chasing him and he thought he was going die before he’d have to finish it. Since the Return, Holmes has tried humoring Watson–he accepts Musgrave’s invitation to his country estate, he agrees to come with him to the back end of Cornwall–but he can’t make himself enjoy it. (Watson goes shooting with Musgrave; Holmes sits on a bench with his 50 shawls. Watson wants them to enjoy the rugged Cornish landscape together; Holmes wants to take long solitary walks and dig up the remains of dead civilizations.) This perhaps explains why "Boscombe” is the second  _Case-Book_ episode which starts with Watson on holiday by himself. One imagines–I imagine, anyway–that Holmes finally just said look, these ‘holidays’ make me miserable, but you obviously need them; so go out there and get as much fresh air as you want, just leave me to poison myself in London. And yet, Holmes can apparently only stand so much tobacco-enshrouded solitude before he goes galloping down to wherever Watson is holidaying to drag him off on a case. 

So, one of the things that I like about “Boscombe Valley” is that, now that all this is out in the open, Holmes and Watson do get a weekend getaway that they both actually enjoy. Fresh air notwithstanding, for once the hotel isn’t a run-down hole-in-the-wall that serves nasty food. It’s a nice place, they’re being treated very well, and you can see them both sort of relaxing and enjoying all the comforts. Watson even breaks out what must be his most flamboyant dinner jacket:

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs2BnZaLc)

I am, I will admit, a sucker for the established relationship, and this episode really delivers that in a very rich and satisfying way, in the small things as well as the large.

Holmes’s decision to let Turner go takes place in what I would argue is a significantly different context from the one provided by the ACD canon story, and that makes it more interesting and more poignant to me. In the canon story, as I said, this is the first time Holmes has ever done something like this, and he’s nervous about it. Before Turner shows up, he makes a production of asking Watson to weigh in on his dilemma:

**‘ “Look here, Watson,” he said when the cloth was cleared “just sit down in this chair and let me preach to you for a little. I don’t know quite what to do, and I should value your advice.” ’**

Most of what happens after this is Holmes walking Watson through the evidence and the deductions; but the main thing he wants to hear from Watson is what to do about the fact that the murderer is a dying man–and also the father of the very girl who has been pleading with them so earnestly to find the real killer. When he hears Turner’s story, and about how McCarthy had been blackmailing him for years, Holmes makes the decision to try to shield McCarthy. We don’t find out much about how Watson reacts to any of this; but we do get Holmes’s commentary on it:

**“God help us!” said Holmes after a long silence. “Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter’s words, and say, ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.’ ”**

As written, this is a young, healthy, man in the prime of life and at the beginning of his career making an imaginative effort to empathize with a “poor, helpless worm” whose condition he sees as very different from his own. He sees himself as taking pity on a weaker, more vulnerable creature; and though he acknowledges that he  _could_  wind up as poor and helpless as Turner, that just underlines the fact that he’s not there yet.

Hawkesworth cuts all of this except for the first three words; and as much as I love this passage in context, I think he was right to do it. Coming where it does in the order, Holmes’s decision in “Boscombe Valley” forces him to re-evaluate what’s now a longstanding practice of making his own decisions about what to do with the criminals he identifies. The adaptation, which replaces Lestrade with a local inspector–Colin Jeavons was obviously just not on board for the  _Case-Book_  series, since Lestrade was also supposed to be in  _Baskervilles_  and “Frances Carfax” _–_ makes it clearer that Miss Turner is Holmes’s client and that his main responsibility is to her. Unfortunately, this means that Holmes is in a very difficult position once he discovers the identity of the killer, because it’s impossible for him to protect *all* of his client’s interests. He must either expose his client’s father–which she clearly didn’t hire him to do–or allow his client’s one true love to hang, which is the one thing she explicitly hired him to prevent. (The adaptation is also much more straightforward about the fact that the children actually do love each other mutually, which raises the stakes for both Holmes and Watson; ever since “Abbey Grange” they have really embraced the role of guardian angel for star-crossed lovers.)

The strategy Holmes eventually decides to pursue–have Watson write down Turner’s dictated confession, get him to sign it, and then keep it in reserve in case McCarthy is convicted–is, from a legal point of view, unbelievably risky. Especially if Turner is dead, there’s no guarantee they could establish the authenticity of that confession to anyone’s satisfaction. Watson is worthless as a witness; he’s too close to Holmes. The document is in Watson’s handwriting and it would be easy enough to forge a signature. If Holmes waits until McCarthy is actually  _convicted_  to produce it, as he says he intends to do, there seems to me no guarantee that the judge would even take it into consideration–especially since, unlike in the canon story, Turner does in fact die before the trial is over.

So in this context, when Holmes says “God help us,” I read it differently. Here, there’s none of the distance and the unavoidable condescension that comes with pity. The older, wiser, judge-and-jury Holmes is for once genuinely troubled about what he’s done by taking the law into his own hands. He knows that what he’s just done may lead to the death of an innocent man. He has chosen to protect the older, weaker, more broken man instead. Because this Holmes, the one closing in on the end of his journey, has been there. He identifies with Turner instead of pitying him; and the knowledge that this makes his decision on some level a selfish one bothers him–as it should. Pardoning the killer who is Like You because he is Like You is one of the things that perpetuates oppression.

Even more troublingly, Holmes knows he’s dragging Watson into this ethical morass well, which is part of what’s implied by the “us.” Ever since Holmes let Ryder go in “Blue Carbuncle,” Watson has been bothered by Holmes’s apparent belief that he’s above the law. He can always sympathize with Holmes’s motives; but there’s always resistance. But over the course of the series, we find that resistance weakening until it becomes pretty much pro forma. And in this one, Watson puts up no resistance when asked to transcribe the confession. But right to the end of the episode, he’s pushing for Holmes to use it, and Holmes knows he has no intention of doing so. The “God help us” is partly Holmes’s realization of how much he’s influenced Watson’s own ethics and his own moral choices, and what a responsibility  _that_ is.

But there’s another layer to this story. All the way through this episode, Holmes is working on Watson to bring him around to his way of thinking. That scene with the Fabulous Jacket ends with a great little moment, in which Holmes teases Watson about the fact that he’s starting to believe in McCarthy’s innocence. I was thinking about this later and I realized: this isn’t just about the two of them. In “Abbey Grange,” Holmes drafts Watson as the jury in their mock trial, noting that Watson is uniquely qualified to “represent” one. The only way Holmes can really do right by both his client and his conscience is to persuade a British jury of McCarthy’s innocence. Holmes has already determined that Watson thinks like a British jury. So all the way through, when Holmes is trying to persuade Watson,  _he’s really testing out the case for the defense._ That’s the real reason he’s so happy to see that Watson is starting to look for evidence of McCarthy’s innocence: it shows him that Holmes’s plan to use his expert testimony to destroy the prosecution’s case against McCarthy  _is_  working on Watson and therefore  _will_  work on a British jury. Watson’s change of heart is what gives Holmes enough confidence to hold the confession back until after the outcome of the trial. And Watson probably doesn’t realize any of this. Even after all this time, there are still some surprises left for Watson to discover.

Regardless, it’s still a risk, and it’s still a huge responsibility. And that’s why I think the final scene, with Holmes lighting the confession on fire as he dispassionately talks about the case’s features of interest, means more in the adaptation than the conclusion of the canon story does. He’s openly destroying evidence–and thereby acknowledging to himself and Watson that the decision  _not_  to bring a murderer to trial is active and not passive. That letting Turner or Crocker or Sterndale go is an action in and of itself–an action that he’s always been too ready to take impulsively, an action with far-reaching consequences that he really ought to stop to consider. Holmes is as lost in his way as the “poor, helpless worm” he’s protecting. God help us is right.


	29. Hell, London: THE ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to talk about what this adaptation does with Kitty Winter, pictured above on the cab ride home from their dramatic visit to Violet de Merville’s house. But I will be talking about all that in the context of what really makes this episode stand out, which is what this adaptation does with the Great Partnership. This is a great episode for the Brett and Hardwicke team–even though, curse my besotted teenage heart of yore, I still can’t help wishing sometimes that I was watching Brett and Burke do this instead.

I’m going to start with a true story.

Years ago, when Mrs. Plaidder and I were still in school, we had a friend who I will call V. V was an outspoken feminist; also, she was unusually beautiful. (By this I mean that her beauty was obvious even to straight men.) A lot of the men who hit on her were jerks. But she had this one boyfriend who really seemed to us like a keeper. He was sensitive, he listened, he understood and supported her politics; we met him and we thought he was great. They seemed very happy together. Then, one time, we asked after him, and V. said they weren’t together any more. We asked what happened. V. said, “Well, I read his journal.” 

The difference between the boyfriend as he had been presenting to her (and us) and the boyfriend revealed in those journal entries was STARTLING. He wrote about her personally in shockingly demeaning terms; but I think what definitively ended it for V was his description of participating in an especially vile form of sex tourism. And honestly, you would never have known from interacting with him. From what I hear from straight women, this is not uncommon. Evidently a lot of men learn how to simulate a personality in order to attract women they want to sleep with, inhabiting it so effortlessly that it can take a long time for the target to find out what he’s really like.  

All this is to say that when I first read the Sherlock Holmes stories as a child, I did not know enough to appreciate “The Illustrious Client.” I was very frustrated with Violet de Merville for being dumb enough to fall for the wicked Baron. I’m still frustrated with the way in which, as we get further into the 20th century, Doyle shifts from women who come to Holmes because they know something’s wrong, and women whose relatives and friends come to him because *they* know something wrong but the victim herself is too blind/infatuated/stubborn to admit it. But I can now see, through the layers of melodrama enveloping this most sensationalistic of plots, the outline of something very real. You don’t have to be an idiot to for fall for a guy who’s made a career out of convincing women that he’s better than he really is. And although most guys who do this are simply hiding their turbo-jerkdom, some of them are hiding their abusive tendencies; and any abuser is a potential murderer. The wicked Baron was, even in 1924, something of a melodramatic cliche. But although Baron Gruner may be a nearly-cartoonish exaggeration, that doesn’t mean he’s not real.

Below the cut tag I’m going to talk about what this adaptation does with Kitty Winter, pictured above on the cab ride home from their dramatic visit to Violet de Merville’s house. But I will be talking about all that in the context of what really makes this episode stand out, which is what this adaptation does with the Great Partnership. This is a great episode for the Brett and Hardwicke team–even though, curse my besotted teenage heart of yore, I still can’t help wishing sometimes that I was watching Brett and Burke do this instead.

What I mainly remember from reading “Illustrious Client” for the first time, in my vanished youth, was an anxious concern over the state of Holmes and Watson’s relationship. “Illustrious Client” was published in 1924, and belongs to the period where, as Watson says, their “relations” had become “peculiar.” In ACD canon, once you get past  _The Return of Sherlock Holmes_ , things between Holmes and Watson start to get weird. In  _His Last Bow_  and  _The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,_  Doyle seems to be slowly dissolving the Great Partnership. At some point before “The Blanched Soldier” and “The Lion’s Mane,” Watson remarries, leaving Holmes not only working on his own but narrating his own adventures. At some point before “His Last Bow,” which is narrated in the third person, Holmes is sent on a multi-year undercover mission by the British government, apparently sans Watson (who is nevertheless in at the kill, disguised as Holmes’s chauffeur). But at some point before all that, Watson appears to have moved out; and this is the part that I (even as a child who didn’t know what ‘shipping’ meant) always found baffling and sort of painful. On the one hand, “Illustrious Client” starts out with Holmes and Watson in a Turkish bath together. On the other hand, Watson mentions casually afterwards that he had his own place in Queen Anne Street at this time. WHY? my plaintive younger self demanded. Why would you LEAVE 221B? VOLUNTARILY?

It’s not just a throwaway line, either. The fact that Watson’s no longer living with Holmes is very important to the plot. It’s the reason that 1) Holmes is alone when Gruner’s gang of thugs jump him 2) Watson finds out about this assault from the goddamn  _papers_ and 3) after his beating, Holmes is treated primarily by specialists, with Watson just dropping in occasionally so 4) Watson never really knows exactly what Holmes’s physical condition is.

So thing #1 I appreciate about this adaptation is that Chapman has no time for this drifting-apart bullshit. It’s true that he does have Watson talk about staying late at the “surgery” (since when has he been in practice, after Holmes’s cousin bought him out?); but honestly, Chapman has to separate them somehow before the assault happens. Otherwise, Gruner’s goons would have had to kill Watson to get to Holmes. And I can see why they wanted to keep Watson finding out from the papers. It’s better, even, because although Watson is actually on his way home to 221B, where he will be seeing Holmes momentarily, dude  _still_  stops to buy the paper first because he just can’t help himself.

But in all other respects, the adaptation sustains a much closer intimacy between the two principals than the canon story does. I mean I was watching the opening teaser thinking, hm, I wonder if they’re really going to do the Turkish bath thing or not…

HELLO. Yes, they do it. Indeed, they are kind of, you should pardon the expression, taking a bath in it. It’s true they put the little end table between them with the hookah on it…but all the same…

[Originally posted by hemlock-in-the-cocktails](https://tmblr.co/ZzAsQm1dIuj1O)

…they’re milking it. I tell you, this old-school heritage-TV low-budget Dark Days of the HIV Epidemic series was 1000% more comfortable with Holmes/Watson intimacy than some very fancy hip twenty-first century adaptations I could…but no. No, I will rise above. I will not go there. 

[Originally posted by granada-brett-crumbs](https://tmblr.co/ZgvRKh2N5C7my)

(Holmes knows I’m totally going there. All right, I am…but ONLY IN MY HEAD!)

But that’s not really the most intimate thing that happens in this episode. A more important decision is to make Watson the only doctor attending Holmes after his beating. Here, I have to say, I do miss Burke just a little bit, because his Watson’s bedside manner was more handsy (I talk about this in my writeup of “Naval Treaty”). But Watson sitting in that darkened room with a really pretty severely damaged Holmes is still pretty intense, and I love the little eye-roll Holmes gives him as he accepts Watson’s authority ( “Yes…DOCTOR”). There’s a moment later on when Watson’s sitting next to Holmes, blasting through a book on ancient Chinese pottery while also taking Holmes’s temperature. Watson reaches over, grabs the thermometer without even looking at it, glances at it to make sure the temperature’s normal, and then starts shaking it down with one hand as he returns to the book. Holmes’s eyes follow him, and it’s just a kind of heart-wringing little moment. Watson’s completely absorbed in his task, and so he appears to be indifferent to Holmes’s gaze. But what Watson’s absorbed in, of course, is his devotion to Holmes–that’s why he’s cramming on ancient Chinese pottery as if his medical license depends on it, that’s why taking Holmes’s temperature has become so routine he can do it automatically. I think you can see Holmes realizing that, and just lingering on this view of Watson, completely absorbed in his task, helping and healing him just by being there with him. It’s a more poignant version of the “moral support” moment from “Norwood Builder,” years later, both of them older and more fragile.

Let me just say this: when young people talk about “growing old together” they often imagine it as this sort of Edenic scene with the two lovebirds sitting together on a porch, holding hands, rocking gently as the breeze blows through their silver hair. In fact, “growing old together” is not that idyllic; it is an active struggle, it requires courage and resilience, and it involves a LOT of what you see in the sickroom scenes here: seeing each other through pain and illness and injury. So I’m in a position where I can really appreciate this:

[Originally posted by granada-brett-crumbs](https://tmblr.co/ZgvRKh2N7jOPk)

…especially when you contrast it with this:

Yeah, I know I said I wasn’t going to go there…I lied, all right? I cannot NOT GO THERE. The parallels make themselves and the inversions are just too fucking ironic. Once again, Holmes has been severely beaten and is lying in bed with Watson by his side…only this time,  _Watson is the one who beat him up_. Y’all can do this if you want, Moffat and Gatiss, but this is NOT what I signed up for.

But I digress.

I am also fascinated by the fact that during the sickbed scenes, Brett’s voice drops an octave, just as it did when they were filming  _The Hound of the Baskervilles_  when Brett was actually sick. I really wonder what it was like for Brett and Hardwicke filming these scenes. By all accounts, Hardwicke was very supportive of Brett through his illnesses and they became pretty close. At any rate, I really appreciate the fact that Chapman banished the specialist and let Watson do the doctoring. Also, I like it that Watson gets to actually use his knowledge during his scene with Gruner. The man is a doctor, after all, presumably he knows how to memorize shit.

And this brings us to Kitty Winter and the vitriol.

As I said at some point somewhere, I think Kitty and Porky need their own spinoff. The fight in the sewer is one of the most successful fight scenes they’ve staged for this series, and Porky’s personality really shines through. The attack on Holmes is shot so that we don’t have to see too much of Brett fighting; but it’s done effectively enough. (The bastards went for the head. Gruner promises to shoot for the head too. What an evil-minded little psychopath he is.) They should team up and fight crime. The revelation of Kitty’s scars at Violet de Merville’s house is a shock to the viewers, of course, because this is not in canon at all. But it’s also a shock to Holmes; and that’s another thing I appreciate about this adaptation. When he’s telling the story to Watson later, he starts reproaching himself for not having deduced the scars earlier. He’s realizing that for all his science of deduction there are certain blindnesses he still can’t truly compensate for. Holmes has been to Hell, London–but only as a visitor. He doesn’t really know what it’s like to  _live_  there, and he never will. So he didn’t look at Kitty closely enough. She wasn’t his client, she was just a tool he was planning to use–one in a thousand ‘fallen women’ who were tossed on the scrapheap after losing their ‘virtue’ to some asshole who pretended to be better than he was. But in that conversation, he tells Watson that he feels like just leaving Violet to marry the Baron and wishing them joy–because he feels the contrast between Kitty’s “spirit” and the smug upper-class self-satisfaction that allows Violet to dismiss Kitty’s pain as something that can’t possibly happen to her. I was, at first, annoyed at this utter lack of sympathy for Violet, who is as much a victim of Gruner’s machinations as Kitty is. But then I thought: you know, Violet is not somehow more valuable as a human being just because her family is friends with King Edward VII (who everyone pretty much figures is the Illustrious Client). She has Sir James and Holmes and the His Royal Freaking Highness Himself looking out for her, just because of the family she was born into; and who was looking out for Kitty when Gruner came for her? No one. 

Linking the vitriol attack to the Secret Book is a clever move on Chapman’s part, not only because it makes the revelation of the Secret Book’s existence more dramatic, but because it emphasizes something which is only latent in the canon story–which is that Baron Gruner is basically a proto-serial killer. That book he’s pasting Violet’s picture into is no different, fundamentally, from the unbelievably pretentious journal that Paul Spector is keeping of his victims in  _The Fall._ He hasn’t, of course, actually *killed* all of the women in the book–though Kitty hints that Gruner’s killed a few more people than Holmes knows about–but he’s destroyed them, and the book is valuable to him as a record of their destruction. That he enjoys savoring his own villainy is obvious not just from the book, but from the fact that he’s seen reading it while listening to the Catalogue Song from Mozart’s  _Don Giovanni,_ in which Leporello whips out his black book and goes through his list of all the different women his boss has raped, seduced, and otherwise consumed in his lifetime. Significantly, in that song, Leporello talks about the fact that some of these conquests are about pleasure, but some of them are  _per piacer di porle in lista–”_ for the pleasure of putting them on the list.” The song is an answer to a question that might arise, which is: why does this smooth criminal keep that incriminating book around? He keeps it around because it’s the whole reason he does what he does: he destroys women  _for the pleasure of putting them on the list._ He doesn’t really want them; he wants the credit for destroying them. And so it’s actually a very clever touch that he throws vitriol on Kitty because she refuses to look at the book with him. The one thing she did that enraged him was to decline to participate in her own humiliation, or to gloat over the humiliation of the women who had come before her. He attacks her physically because her refusal to look at the book shows that despite his best efforts, he hasn’t been able to corrupt and degrade her to his own satisfaction. 

So all this is great for Kitty. She stows away on the back of Watson’s cab, acting completely independently of Holmes and Watson; and her vitriol-throwing, while still very Woman Scorned, is now reciprocal: she turns on him the weapon he used against her. Props to the production team, BTW, for finding a credible way to do the vitriol throwing. Much more effective to show the painting melting under the acid than to attempt to represent the vitriol-ravaged Baron’s face. It also saves Holmes some embarrassment. In the canon story, Holmes takes Kitty along with him, and later protests total ignorance of her intentions–even though he mentions that he could see she was carrying something very carefully under her cloak. “How could I have known” what was in it, he asks. YOU ARE SHERLOCK HOLMES. THAT’S HOW. Indeed, in the canon story, one has to conclude either that Holmes really is slipping–or that he knew damn well what was in that vial, and he was using Kitty to punish Gruner the same way he used the swamp adder to punish Roylott.

So here’s to you, Kitty Winter, and good luck with the spinoff. I will miss your fiery red hair and your even more fiery spirit and of course your beautiful side-eye game:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt1avkZRE)

I will miss them EVEN MORE, I am sure, once I move on to “The Creeping Man.”


	30. This Case Is Unworthy Of You: THE CREEPING MAN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They fell for one of the classic blunders, Watson.”
> 
> “What do you mean, Holmes?”
> 
> “The first of, of course, is ‘never start a land war in Asia.’”
> 
> “I quite agree, Holmes. The last one brought me nothing but misery.”
> 
> “But only slightly less well known is this: if you happen to be running an television series that deals in mystery, horror, and suspense, NEVER build an episode of it around animal possession.”

“They fell for one of the classic blunders, Watson.”

“What do you mean, Holmes?”

“The first of, of course, is ‘never start a land war in Asia.’”

“I quite agree, Holmes. The last one brought me nothing but misery.”

“But only slightly less well known is this: if you happen to be running an television series that deals in mystery, horror, and suspense, NEVER build an episode of it around animal possession.”

“But surely, Holmes, in many of our cases…there was the affair of the speckled band…”

“Ha!”

“The diabolical business of that monstrous hound–”

“My dear Watson, you entirely misunderstand the problem. In both of those cases, the animal in question was merely a tool in the hands of a human villain employing it for nefarious yet coherent purposes. But when the animal in fact  _possesses_  the human villain…it will not do, Watson. If you would vary your reading diet beyond the papers and the penny dreadfuls, you would be aware of hundreds of precedents that should warn the canny adapter to steer clear of such narratives. In the pigeonhole marked “X,” for example, are records of two alarming instances, ‘Teso Dos Bichos’ and ‘Alpha,’ each of which was a hideous  _melange_  of horror cliche and irretrievable silliness.”

“But surely, Holmes, neither you nor I could have any knowledge of that, given that  _The X-Files_  only began airing in 1993.”

“Indeed, this metafictional conceit has already grown so unstable I fear it must collapse within seconds. Why not relinquish it, prior to the cut tag, and repair together to the Turkish bath. I feel a STRONG need to cleanse my pores of this particular escapade.”

There are some Sherlock Holmes stories that are classics. There are some that have major problems but continue to endear themselves to the public. There are some in which one tiny nugget of gold is buried in a vast swamp of tedium. And then there are some that need to just be left in the battered tin dispatch box of Doyle’s craziness. “The Creeping Man” is one of those. It is true that, during the early decades of the twentieth century,[ using monkey glands for rejuvenation was actually a thing](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlasobscura.com%2Farticles%2Fthe-true-story-of-dr-voronoffs-plan-to-use-monkey-testicles-to-make-us-immortal&t=NWIyMGRiZmY0ZjUzZDJiZjJjNzdmZDIxMmU0ZTU5OGI4NWViZjMzZSxJUk8yS2RTTQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F162694881794%2Fthis-case-is-unworthy-of-you-granada-holmes&m=1), though Doyle has considerably sanitized the process. Serge Voronoff, who pioneered this ‘treatment,’ used to graft animal testicles onto the testicles of his patients, on the theory that this would increase their sexual potency. So Dr. Presbury, who’s so keen to marry a woman his daughter’s age, would actually have been a prime candidate for Voronoff’s operation.

However. Regardless, the plot of Doyle’s “Creeping Man” is, God forgive me for what I am about do here, bananas. Well, perhaps I should say that it’s bananas for the mystery genre. In the world of comic superheroes, sure, the idea that being injected with serum from an animal will make you act like that animal would totally fly. In fantasy and horror, also. But Holmes practices the  _science_  of detection. His whole gig is resolving apparently supernatural or mysterious occurrences into rationally explicable phenomena. And no matter how you slice it, that is just not what happens in “The Creeping Man.” The solution is impossible for a twenty-first century person (at least one with a basic grasp of human biology and modern science) to believe. And unlike with other problematic solutions, such as in “Speckled Band” or “Norwood Builder,” it’s not wrong in some partial and fixable way. It is wrong completely and totally, from one end to the other.

Then there’s the fact that this story about people regressing to a simian state raises the specter of Victorian racism. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, one of the most common tropes used to deny humanity to a specific group of people was to depict them as simian. Racist Victorian scientists and anthropologists posited Africans as the evolutionary link between apes and Causcasians, thus dehumanizing Africans and putting some distance between themselves and their nearest primate cousins. But really, I shouldn’t call this Victorian racism, because that shit is  _still going on in my own country._  Immediately after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the rest of us watched appalled as people on the racist right started comparing both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama to gorillas, monkeys, apes, etc., verbally and visually. The grotesque resurrection of this racist trope was startling, sudden, and extremely disturbing. So that’s part of my baggage as a twenty-first century American watching this episode, and I’m sure it influenced my response to it.  

Robin Chapman, who did such a good job with “Illustrious Client,” evidently decided that the only way to do this story was to go Gothic with it. He basically jettisons the mystery and kind of turns it into  _Were-Apes of London_. In the canon story, all of Professor Presbury’s symptoms have been documented by Bennett before he consults Holmes. Everyone can agree on what’s happening; they just don’t know why. Chapman works hard to make the mystery more mysterious, and therefore more Ominous. First, there’s debate about whether anything is happening at all, with Bennett apparently willing to dismiss Edith’s account of the face at her window if it will help him avoid pissing off his boss. Bennett rubbed me the wrong way immediately, partly because of his very lukewarm defense of Edith, and partly because of some indefinable… 

…I was staring at him thinking, I know I’ve seen him before…is that Roger Rees? No, that’s not Roger Rees…but it’s SOME kind of British period adaptation of some classic… 

OH YEAH. Wickham from  _Pride and Prejudice_. THAT’S why I don’t like him. Anyway, so in addition to not being able to make up his mind about whether Edith really saw anything or whether he wants Holmes on the case, Bennett conceals vital information, which Holmes then has to extract for himself. And yet, at the same time, there is less mystery, because the solution is constantly being telegraphed. All the sets are filled with references to apes. Professor Presbury’s study is full of ape specimens. He gives a lecture on apes which Holmes attends. Holmes fills 221b with books about apes. Chapman invents a subplot in which Lestrade is investigating a gang which is stealing primates from local zoos. (Good to see Colin Jeavons back at last, even if it’s only for this.) The whole episode is screaming, “APE. HE’S AN APE. THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS AN APE-MAN. IF YOU ARE WONDERING WHAT IT IS THAT HE’S BECOMING, LET ME SUGGEST TO YOU THAT IT MIGHT BE AN APE.”

I assume this is all so that we can start feeling Unnerved and Unsettled by the ominous approach of the Ape Within. Chapman does try to bring out the horror aspects of the story, emphasizing the incest overtones (Presbury’s face at Edith’s window, the fact that he’s violently in love with a girl Edith’s age) and making explicit the threat of sexual violence represented by Presbury’s ‘rejuvenation’ (Alice breaks off the engagement; that night, Presbury invades her bedroom and is obviously planning to rape her). And I guess that’s not a stupid idea; but honestly, no matter how you dress it up on the way there, the moment will eventually come when you are asked to be shocked and horrified…

…by the utterly ridiculous sight of a grown man swinging through the tree branches and howling like a gibbon.

So honestly, no matter what Chapman did, this episode was destined to be kind of a shit sandwich. There’s just no hiding the rot at the center.

It’s an achievement, really, that  _some_  of this episode is good; and pretty much all the good has to do with the way Chapman writes the Great Partnership. As in “Illustrious Client,” Chapman rescues the relationship from the wretched state into which it has deteriorated in the canon story. Surely this is the saddest paragraph in all of Watson’s narration:

**“The relations between us in those latter days were peculiar. He was a man of habits, narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me—many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead—but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject. If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.”**

What Chapman does is turn this passive-aggressive lament into a lovers’ tiff which is actually kind of fun to watch and must have been fun for them to play. Watson, as in the canon story, is irritated by being dragged away from his surgery to hear about this nonsense; but instead of this oh poor me I know I’m mostly useless but I still have some humble role to play BS, Watson Goes Off:

[Originally posted by gatissed](https://tmblr.co/Z2Xt-v2FY4eWr)

 …and then storms off, while Brett gives the most priceless look at the camera, murmuring, “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?” and then casting an exasperated glance heavenward as the door slams. In general, Holmes’s snark game is strong in this one–it’s good for him to have Lestrade back–and it carries us through a lot of this episode. Sure enough, Watson is in tow when they reach Presbury’s house, and Holmes feels confident enough to air a little of their business as they head up the stairs to Edith’s window: “I’m glad to see you’re more yourself today; you were a veritable BEAR last night.” When Holmes has is epiphany over the Evening Standard in the middle of the night, he goes clomping up the stairs shouting for Watson, thus reassuring us that in fact they’re still living together (in the canon story, they’re not). Watson, meanwhile, bitches about the task he’s been given but does it anyway. My favorite moment for Watson, actually, is when Holmes says it’s time to go back to Dorak’s shop to kick some ass, and Watson says he’ll be delighted. He’s so looking forward to watching Holmes deal with those jackasses who threatened him.

But when we get beyond the H/W stuff, this episode is just not very how. It’s true there is an attempt at exciting sympathy for our primate cousins, and there’s this interesting shot of Holmes in the zoo, one exhibit among many:

That is one thing you can say for this episode; Chapman steers clear of that racist history I was talking about earlier by suggesting that the Great Sherlock Holmes himself is as close to the lower primates as any other human would be–closer, perhaps, given that Holmes too is not always perceived by his peers as being fully human. So that’s a relief, because…wait a minute…

[Originally posted by mollydobby](https://tmblr.co/ZUNA5v1xrWRS0)

Is that a…wind-up…oh please tell me that is not some kind of hideously embarrassing Victorian wind-up monkey toy…

…oh my God. It’s a monkey in Eastern Garb smoking a hookah and sitting on a music box that plays a tinkly little version of the title music. All right, we’ve seen it now, can it please go away…

…no, they’re going to make me stare at it till the credits are over. 

Look, I understand, you sent the production assistants out to scour the country for monkey-related Victoriana, and they did a bang-up job with it and I’m sure they were very excited. I’m sure they must have thought this thing was the biggest score EVER, I know everyone must have been oohing and aahing over it, once you’ve found a wind-up music box hookah-smoking kitsch monkey I can see you’d want to use it, but you see that whole simianization thing that I was talking about is all over this thing like…oh…well…never mind, I’ll just…

…and now you’re telling me the ‘gorilla’ in this episode was in fact, as I had suspected, a guy in a gorilla suit. Perfect.

Ah well. They can’t all be winners; and this one wasn’t. I move ahead…warily.


	31. Time Is Not On Her Side: THREE GABLES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the page, Holmes is immortal. He rises from the dead, and is allowed to drift off into various afterlives: keeping bees on the South Downs, international espionage, the Valhalla of the mind where it is always 1895. That’s part of what fascinates us about him: he never has to get old, he never has to die. Over time, film and TV adaptation preserves the myth of Holmes’s immortality by continually renewing the character and the stories so that a rejuvenated Holmes reappears, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and modern, with each iteration. But this adaptation, because of the rapid deterioration of Brett’s health during the last few years of filming, unavoidably dramatizes human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality in ways that are often difficult to watch.

One thing I have noticed, in my various rewatch projects, is that when a TV series is in decline, the episodes seem to start commenting on the show’s predicament. The clearest example I can think of at the moment is series 8 of  _The X-Files_ , in which many of the key arc episodes focus on the difficulty of deciding when something is dead and when it’s alive. I found [a very poignant review of the third-season _Star Trek_  episode “That Which Survives”](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fthem0vieblog.com%2F2016%2F08%2F17%2Fstar-trek-that-which-survives-review%2F&t=Nzc1ZDk4MzBmY2FmMDExOWIzN2Q2MzIyOTJmN2E3ZGM2ZDEzN2NlMiw0aVRkQ1NEYg%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F163144013839%2Ftime-is-not-on-her-side-granada-holmes-three&m=1) in which the writer (who goes by the name of Darren) argues that its plot is a metaphor for the show’s third-season crisis:   **“[Star Trek](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fthem0vieblog.com%2Freviews-hub%2Fstar-trek-the-original-series-reviews%2F&t=ZWJlNDBkZWZmMTliNjg5ZDJjOTdhMzZiOTgyNjQwZmQzNTE4ZWYwZSw0aVRkQ1NEYg%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F163144013839%2Ftime-is-not-on-her-side-granada-holmes-three&m=1) had been killed at the end of its second season, cancelled by NBC. The show was resurrected for a third season, although it did not return at full strength. Vital members of the production team departed the show. The budget was cut… For many watching at home, there was a sense that the third season had changed. In some ways, Star Trek had come back wrong.” ** Of course, this effect must be partly, and may be wholly, in the eye of the rewatcher, and is always more intense in hindsight. Certainly that goes double for me at this moment. I started this rewatch as a way of escaping from the real-world anxieties of the summer of 2017: the continued degradation of my country under a criminal and corrupt regime; the worsening climate crisis; my own chronic health issues; my wife’s cancer treatment. As I work through the series, though, I find that increasingly, instead of offering escape, what it really seems to be offering me is a way of confronting some of these same anxieties–including my fears about disease, decline, and death. 

All this is just to say that although you wouldn’t call this a good episode, and although it’s now clear that Brett’s illness is affecting his performance, and though this is based on what I would say is the Actual Worst Story In The Sherlock Holmes Canon And That’s Up Against Some Stiff Competition, there is something interesting to watch in “Three Gables.” If “Eligible Bachelor” is about mental illness, “Three Gables” is preoccupied with aging. Both Langdale Pike–pictured above in one of those window-reflection shots that director Peter Hammond is so freaking enamored of–and Holmes’s adversary Isadora Klein are creatures of fashion who are aging out of the cult of youth and beauty that created the rarefied atmosphere in which they flourish. The strongest thing about this episode, whether it was intentional or simply unavoidable, is the way Holmes’s interactions with them confront him and us with some uncomfortable but inescapable truths about what it means to be mortal.

On the page, Holmes is immortal. He rises from the dead, and is allowed to drift off into various afterlives: keeping bees on the South Downs, international espionage, the Valhalla of the mind where it is always 1895. That’s part of what fascinates us about him: he never has to get old, he never has to die. Over time, film and TV adaptation preserves the myth of Holmes’s immortality by continually renewing the character and the stories so that a rejuvenated Holmes reappears, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and modern, with each iteration. But  _this_  adaptation, because of the rapid deterioration of Brett’s health during the last few years of filming, unavoidably dramatizes human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality in ways that are often difficult to watch. 

And straight up, I will say that at this point Brett’s performance is deteriorating, and that’s tragic. It isn’t just that both the ethereal beauty that belonged to him in his youth and the chiseled features of his early middle age have deserted him. The things that are going wrong–the exaggerations, the oversold high points, the jerkiness of the physical movements–are not volitional, and I guess this is something I want people to understand. An actor’s instrument is his body, and you can’t get a good performance out of a broken instrument. It isn’t just age. Brett doesn’t have the control he used to have over his voice because his breathing is now unreliable. His face has lost some expressivity because of the bloating and because they are now making him up more heavily in an apparent effort to camouflage his illness. (In several scenes his lipliner is visible, even in the low-res version of this that I’m watching.) What’s hard about watching him in this episode (and, I imagine, in the rest of the “Memoirs” episodes) is that you can still see the outlines of all the gestures, tones of voice, etc. that made his Holmes so indelible. Brett’s intentions are the same, but he can no longer control the execution, and nuance is more and more out of reach. 

There seems to be a loss of intensity in the Holmes/Watson relationship. Holmes and Watson spend a lot of this episode apart, as they do in “Eligible Bachelor” and “Last Vampyre.” Although Watson has plenty to do–back in “Master Blackmailer” they started having Watson do some of the interviews, and I think at this point we can say it was partly to make things easier on Brett–Holmes’s reaction to Watson’s beating struck me as strange. Holmes shows more upset and agitation about it in his scenes with Mrs. Hudson and Isadora Klein than he does in his scenes with Watson; and although that’s not totally out of character, I was expecting more from their reunion at the Three Gables. Maybe Brett intended for there to be more. But for whatever reason, that drifting-apart that everyone so successfully fought in “Illustrious Client” seems to be happening now. 

The most interesting relationship in this episode, instead, is Holmes and Langdale Pike. It’s with Pike that Holmes plays his deduction game (it’s nice to see some deduction actually happening, even though it doesn’t affect the plot; it’s been a long time). Pike looks and acts like Sir Harry Wotton from  _Dorian Gray._ Since he’s a decayed dandy still dressing as if he were twenty, there’s also a bit of a whiff of  _Death in Venice_  about him. Holmes and Pike are of an age and knew each other at school. One has the sense that in Langdale Pike Holmes sees the end of a road that he himself might have taken: a life dedicated to the pleasures of the senses rather than the intellect, to the pursuit of beauty rather than to the pursuit of truth. He has a monocle instead of a magnifying glass; his knowledge is as encyclopedic but attained via different methods. (This impression is no doubt enhanced by the fact that Langdale actually reminds me a lot of Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes.) He also sees the deterioration of what we can assume was Langdale’s former beauty. 

Holmes acts as if he’s always mildly horrified by Langdale and the fashionable set with which he mingles; but Langdale thinks he knows better, and his insinuating “tittle for tattle” game is full of flirtation and invitation. interestingly, Langdale’s name evokes an immediate spasm of disgust from Watson. Holmes can see himself in Langdale; but the parts of himself he sees there are things with which Watson can have no sympathy. So while Holmes navigates the fancy-dress ball, Watson is in his own native element, digging through grandma Maberley’s attic and sharing her nostalgia for a less complicated and painful past. 

If the episode has sympathy for Langdale, however, it has none for his female counterpart, Isadora Klein. Paul has, thankfully, made an effort to mitigate the story’s profoundly racist treatment of Steve Dixie, though it remains the case that the first Black speaking character we’ve seen in any episode of this show so far is a thug who beats up the show’s most sympathetic character. But if anything, Paul has augmented the original story’s misogyny by blowing Holmes’s interview with Isadora Klein up into a Grand Battle of the Sexes. In fact, Paul writes for Isadora Klein and Holmes very much the way later adaptations will write for Holmes and Irene Adler, and it reminds me all over again of why I hate that. Klein manipulates him, tries to coax pity out of him, plays up her feminine vulnerability, and is enraged when he remains impervious to her Wiles. It’s cliche, it’s below standard in terms of this show’s depiction of women, and it seems a bit desperate–as if Paul is using this scene (from which he has removed Watson) to assure us that Holmes is still a paragon of virility who is irresistible to the ladies, whatever your lying eyes may be telling you to the contrary. 

Paul also emphasizes the fact that Isadora is Of A Certain Age, something with which Holmes consoles himself in the final conversation with Watson. Watson, as usual, is protesting the fact that she will face no consequences either for organizing his own beating or for her treatment of Douglas Maberley. Let me just say in passing that Maberley’s suffering is depicted in flashbacks in the most melodramatic and over-the-top way imaginable, as if the episode is deliberately trying to be as bad as Maberley’s terrible autobiographical novel must surely be. Paul ties Maberley’s death to the beating, so Holmes is not just “compounding a felony, as usual,” but letting go of an unresolved murder investigation. But Holmes is satisfied to know that he’s done Isadora Klein out of her last chance to be a Destroyer of Men: “Time is not on her side.” Knowing that he’s aging is more satisfying to him than any other revenge he could imagine.

So, in the end, this was less distressing than “Eligible Bachelor” and “Last Vampyre,” if only because there is so much less of it. It’s a real relief to return to the one-hour format with the familiar opening credits. They do a good job of staging the lifestyles of the rich and famous–the fancy dress party works much better than some of the other period set pieces they’ve done–and there are some quite endearing moments, such as when Holmes throws a piece of fruit out of the broken 221b window, and the little gem of a mini-scene where Mrs. Hudson gives Holmes the bad news about Watson:

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs25S-L42)

But to me the most important thing this episode offers is an image of human perseverance in the face of the inevitable. I know some fans argue that they should have stopped making the series after “Case Book.” I can see merit to that position. What’s on record in “Three Gables” is not a great performance or a masterful dramatization of a classic Sherlock Holmes story. But it is a record of someone living through the shitstorm that is human mortality, just trying to get the best out of the body that you have and the time you’re given, trying to hold onto as much life as you can while you’re dying. Maybe you have to be who I am and where I am right now to value that. But I find that I do; and I’m grateful for that.


	32. Don't Fail Me: DYING DETECTIVE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first six episodes of this saga, Jeremy Brett was carrying this show. Of course he had a very talented accomplice in David Burke. But over and over in those early episode reviews I’d find myself telling the same story: this is riveting when Brett is on screen and boring, not to say ridiculous, when he’s not.
> 
> For the last six, the show is carrying him. And maybe that’s fair. Very sad. But fair enough.

For the first six episodes of this saga, Jeremy Brett was carrying this show. Of course he had a very talented accomplice in David Burke. But over and over in those early episode reviews I’d find myself telling the same story: this is riveting when Brett is on screen and boring, not to say ridiculous, when he’s not.

For the last six, the show is carrying him. And maybe that’s fair. Very sad. But fair enough.

Up to this point, of course, the show has dropped that ball many times. During the making of  _Hound of the Baskervilles_ , clearly, the team was scrambling to cope with a desperate situation. Unskillful attempts to accommodate Brett’s illness or else just write around him are partly responsible for how bad  _The Last Vampyre_ and _The Eligible Bachelor_ are _._ But with the return to the hour-long format, things seem to have settled down a bit. For “Three Gables,” and now “Dying Detective,” there seems to have been more effort put into making the parts of the episode that don’t have Holmes in them strong enough to stand on their own. Hardwicke is now clearly taking on work that would otherwise have been given to Brett. Mrs. Hudson is taking up more space. The Baker Street Irregulars are back. The guest stars are top-drawer. In fact, many of them starred in other beloved things; so if you have ever wanted, say, to see Jane Bingley really tear the villain a new one, or if you want to see the Earl of Grantham get high on opium, or if you want to see that asshole toff who crashed the Titanic get his comeuppance, “Dying Detective” can do that for you.

I’m not going to linger over these last ones. But behind the cut tag, a couple things about Brett’s performance in this one that kind of break your heart.

So first, the elephant in the room: It’s very, very, very strange to watch “Dying Detective” knowing that Brett was, while they were making it, dying.

I noted that in “Three Gables” the makeup team tried to give him some extra color, but it became too obvious. There’s no attempt to do that in “Dying Detective;” and it’s just pitiful how pale he is. Outdoor light seems especially cruel. The scene in which he publicly curses Culverton Smith is perhaps the most painful.  

But the scene that’s really at the heart of “Dying Detective” is Watson’s first visit to Holmes’s bedside after his supposed infection. And quite unexpectedly, I thought it was the strongest scene he and Hardwicke had done together since “Illustrious Client.” And then I realized. In the sickbed scenes, because Holmes is pretending to be sick, Brett didn’t have to pretend to be well.

It must have been a huge relief to him. That, and the fact that since Holmes is faking it, it wasn’t going to matter if he got it right. The more exaggerated and over the top things got, the better it would be. 

At any rate, for a few minutes there in the red-lit sitting room, it seemed like a little life came back into it. I always seem to be looking for more reaction from Hardwicke than I ever get; but all the same, they play well off each other, and Holmes’s delirious ravings about oysters are very pathetic and yet also so very characteristically Theatrical. Despite all the ghastly makeup, in the red lighting and with his hair everywhere Brett actually kind of looks better on the Deathbed than he does before and afterward. It’s a very through-the-looking-glass moment. It might be unique in the annals of Holmes adaptations: the actor and the character on their different trajectories, meeting and merging at this intersection even though they’re still bound in opposite directions. 

As for the rest of it, well, I don’t think we really needed TWO opium den episodes, and I was really annoyed at the way neither Holmes nor Watson did anything about Victor Savage’s obvious fever during the dinner party until he collapsed in slow-motion. Still, it’s sort of satisfying in a weird way to watch Susannah Harker, who played Jane Bingley in the Colin Firth  _Pride and Prejudice_ , caught up in yet another entailment plot, dispossessed by yet another asshole cousin, and this time NOT go gently into that genteel poverty. Holmes low-key ragging Watson about his attraction to her is sort of endearing– “You’ve already had your head turned, I’d better make sure you don’t break your neck”–and of course this is a great story for Mrs. Hudson, finally just straight up says to him, “You are the worst tenant in the whole of London.” If this were the first episode of this show that you watched, you wouldn’t tune in for a second. But as it is…in this episode, the show does more or less succeed in carrying him. Thank heavens for small mercies. I don’t expect it will last.


	33. I'm Missing Something: THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m afraid that for me this exception proves the rules–the Norwood Builder Rules, to be specific. Early on, Holmes drops a snarky comment about Watson’s limited medical skills, and Mrs. Hudson says, “You only say that because you miss the doctor.” You can see immediately from his reaction that she has HIS number. Yes, Holmes misses the doctor and I miss him too. And this is another of those somewhat spooky ways in which Brett’s illness forces the Granada series to correspond with the canon arc–in which, toward the end of the saga, Watson starts to drop out of the picture.

You know things are dire when even handling paper brings no joy.

This is from the final moments of “The Golden Pince-Nez,” during which Holmes is reading a letter sent to him by Mycroft. Soon, he will be reduced to literally talking to himself, as he answers for the viewer–and for nobody else–Mycroft’s question about why Anna committed suicide. “Past hope and in despair,” he says; “and then…the death of love.” Would have been an appropriate ending for this melancholy episode. Even if you didn’t know about any of the behind the scenes tragedy, this episode would still convey the autumnal scent of decay, of something–as Hamm says–taking its course. Alas, the episode actually *ends* with something far more ridiculous which only proves that no matter how often they try it, the Granada team (rather ironically) still can’t get “leaping from a great height” right. (Every time. Every time it’s a disaster. “Priory School,” “Last Vampyre,” and now this. They got it right once in “Final Problem” and that was by shooting from Very Far Away.)

Gary Hopkins wrote “Devil’s Foot,” which I loved, so I’m just going to assume that most of the WTF? decisions made during the process of adapting this story were dictated by external circumstances. Obviously the biggest was to replace Watson with Mycroft, who has nothing to do with the canon story. I don’t, as usual, know anything about the production process; but although Brett seems to be doing better in this episode than he was in “Dying Detective,” I assume that either Hardwicke had another project to do at filming time, or this change was another attempt to protect an ailing Brett by reducing his workload. This story is very heavy on the deduction–it really makes you wish they’d done it earlier; it would have been a great “Adventures” or “Return” episode and it’s set in 1894–and substituting Mycroft allows him to handle his share of the deducing, which leaves Brett less to memorize and fewer takes to do. It also introduces some novelty value; and I’m not against that. Trying something new insulates the episode slightly from invidious comparisons; since they’ve never done an episode with just Sherlock and Mycroft, people can’t watch it and wish they were watching some earlier episode with just Sherlock and Mycroft. And I’m sure there were Mycroft fans back in the 1990s, as there are today, who were glad to see him get some screen time. Hopkins works in a couple of tantalizing little references to the Holmes brothers’ home life–Sherlock seems particularly pained to discover (improbably, for the first time) that Mycroft has their father’s magnifying glass, and I was somewhat pained to discover that the “whatever is left, however improbable” line originally belonged to their father.

Still and all, I’m afraid that for me this exception proves the rules–[the Norwood Builder Rules](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/159643212814/company-and-moral-support-granada-holmes-the), to be specific. Early on, Holmes drops a snarky comment about Watson’s limited medical skills, and Mrs. Hudson says, “You only say that because you miss the doctor.” You can see immediately from his reaction that she has HIS number. Yes, Holmes misses the doctor and I miss him too. And this is another of those somewhat spooky ways in which Brett’s illness forces the Granada series to correspond with the canon arc–in which, toward the end of the saga, Watson starts to drop out of the picture. 

For kicks, I recently re-read “The Lion’s Mane,” which is just so much worse than I even remembered (for starters, Holmes the master of observation and deduction fails to infer that the victim met his death in the water because he evidently couldn’t tell from a visual inspection that the dude was WET). Everyone has their things about ACD canon that they want to reject. For a lot of people it’s Watson’s first marriage. But I find myself far more distressed by Watson’s *second* marriage, late in the game, to a woman never even vouchsafed a name. Mary Morstan, I can deal with. It’s a sad story all round but at least Holmes and Watson have each other after Watson’s double bereavement is over. Now I have to imagine Holmes retiring to the Sussex Downs ALONE? Are you trying to KILL ME?

As I said, in “Illustrious Client” and “Creeping Man” the adapters were still fighting that narrative. In the “Memoirs,” they seem to have given in to it. Watson is spending a lot more time at his surgery than he used to, and he doesn’t appear in this episode at all. It’s true that in the canon story, he doesn’t have a lot to do that couldn’t be done by someone else; and it’s also true that Watson’s absence makes more sense out of the fact that these bozos allow Anna to literally expire before their eyes without either deducing that she’s taken poison or trying to get her to bring it up. But up to this point, fixing that has always been one of the goals of the Granada series–to make Watson a partner in the firm, rather than a perpetual apprentice. The effect of bringing Mycroft in here, on the other hand, is to reduce Holmes to the role of *junior* partner. Mycroft is the one who figures out where Anna’s been hiding and comes up with a method of getting her to show her tracks; Sherlock only works it out after Mycroft has dropped a couple of very obvious hints. That, let me just say, doesn’t make a lot of sense because Holmes does still get to notice the importance of the coconut-matting in both corridors; of what is that clue “suggestive,” if not the one that Hopkins has him failing to grasp? 

And this irritates me. I think Daddy Holmes should have left Sherlock the magnifying glass. Mycroft does not exactly cover himself with glory in this episode, after all; he spends much of it following a red herring down to a completely gratuitous Women’s Suffrage meeting, where he blusters about what nonsense and poppycock it all is. (Once again, we discover in a bad Granada Holmes episode an early version of something bonkers that shows up in an episode of  _Sherlock._ ) Plus, just purely on a petty note: the constant smoking in Granada Holmes can get irritating, but snuff is MUCH nastier. (In the US, we call it “dip,” or “chewing tobacco,” and my brother used to dip snuff, and we used to find all these half-full plastic bottles of brown…all right, moving on.) 

One is forced to console oneself by reflecting that absence is the highest form of presence. There’s a nice moment when the Professor is ranting about the stupidity of country girls and you see Holmes giving him the “all right, fuck THIS guy” look with which he has favored so many in the past (Carruthers and Roylott being two of the most memorable). All the way back in “Dancing Men,” we see Watson coaching Holmes about consideration for the servants, as he leans over to whisper into his ear that Mrs. King might want to sit down for her interview–knowing that she won’t think she’s allowed unless Holmes gives her permission. In this episode, as in many of the others since “Dancing Men,” Holmes starts his interviews with the servants by asking if they want to sit down. When Susan Tarlton does, and he notices that she’s staring at the bloodstain on the carpet, he covers it with his scarf before continuing the interview. Mycroft doesn’t think of these things; that’s Watson’s influence. Watson’s influence also explains the fact that Anna’s suicide is a mystery to Mycroft but transparent to Holmes. Hope, despair, and the death of love–all things he’s contemplating as he sits alone in 221b, talking to himself, while Watson’s out working at his surgery…still.

Watson will be back, of course. But the show will never be what it was, and neither will their on-screen relationship.


	34. What We Live With: THE RED CIRCLE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The law is what we live with,” Holmes sighs, in the penultimate scene, hoping that one day it will be replaced with justice. Paul gives Holmes and the Lucases their happy ending. We the viewers will not get ours.

The good old canon can still surprise you. The absolute best thing about either the canon or the Granada “Red Circle” is the landlady bonding between Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Warren, Holmes’s initial client. Mrs. Warren has a tenant whose conduct she finds so grievous that she needs to call in a detective to help her deal with it; every time she mentions one of her tenant’s crimes, Holmes basically says, listen, I do the same thing only worse, why don’t you go home and be glad you’re not MY landlady. But Mrs. Hudson’s solidarity is not to be shaken, and Mrs. Warren eventually gets Holmes’s attention. Then, when Mrs. Warren gets overexcited and is in danger of hysterics, Holmes comes around behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders and gives them a little squeeze…and she calms down. I saw that and thought, “What, is that a yoga move?” But I turned to the canon story, and lo:

**“Holmes leaned forward and laid his long, thin fingers upon the woman’s shoulder. He had an almost hypnotic power of soothing when he wished. The scared look faded from her eyes, and her agitated features smoothed into their usual commonplace.”**

There you have it. Per the authority of one A. Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes does a therapeutic version of the Vulcan neck pinch. Put that in your fic and smoke it.

Just as Spock is only ever put in charge of the Enterprise when it’s about to explode, it is only at this advanced stage of crisis that Granada hired a woman to direct. Sarah Hellings, who directed this episode, is probably best known to readers of this blog as the woman who directed the classic Doctor Who two-parter “The Mark of the Rani.” She does a good job; I am particularly appreciative of the way she shoots the opera house environment. But as with all the earlier “Memoirs” episodes, she is fighting an increasingly uphill battle, which in this case is not made any easier by Jeremy Paul’s unnecessarily complicated and heavy-handed script. “The law is what we live with,” Holmes sighs, in the penultimate scene, hoping that one day it will be replaced with justice. Paul gives Holmes and the Lucases their happy ending. We the viewers will not get ours.

One of the reasons I don’t reread stories like “The Red Circle” is that in general, I really dislike Doyle’s Secret Society stories. They tend to be less about Holmes and Watson than they are about the secret society and its fearsomeness; they tend to be more about terror than they are about the science of deduction; and usually, Holmes is more or less helpless before the onslaught of the Secret Cabal. They are also often quite paranoid, especially about immigrants, and definitely anti-revolution. You see this even in the canon “Golden Pince-Nez,” where much of the interest of the original set-up seems to be the eruption of political violence within an English country house supposedly “cut off from outside influences.” The Scrowers, Italian anarchists, Russian nihilists, the KKK–no matter who they’re made up of or what their goals or methods are, they all get lumped in together as shadowy international conspiracies reaching their deadly tentacles out to ensnare helpless victims who have fled to England to escape them. 

The Granada “Red Circle” basically treats the Red Circle as if it were the mob, and in a lot of ways this episode is sort of a bargain-basement  _Godfather_  movie. And this is a shame, because to the extent that the canon “Red Circle” charms the reader, it’s by the gradual movement from what appears to be a trivial but interestingly weird domestic mystery that Holmes is pursuing mainly for fun and to add to his “education”– “Education never ends, Watson!”–to Holmes’s realization that they have unintentionally stumbled across a very serious international intrigue. There’s so much playfulness in the early stages of the investigation–especially the hunt through the agony columns, during which Holmes has a speech about this Victorian version of Craig’s List that Brett would have made magic with back during his “Second Stain” days–that just doesn’t come across in the adaptation. The whimsicality of the opening is drowned out by Watson’s Dramatic Voiceover–and by the way, what is this “both of them loved Emilia” bullshit, Watson? Last I checked, you knew the difference between love and “selfishness”–and by the fact that as soon as Holmes learns that the mysterious lodger was recommended to Mrs. Warren by his former client Enrico Fermani, he’s immediately thinking about this as a Dark and Deadly business. With the bodies piling up–and with Watson at least partially responsible for one of them–the tragic elements of the plot pretty much overpower everything else. Then there’s the fact that the canon story was as much a code story as “Dancing Men” is, but the episode does almost nothing with the code. Now, I know that there are famous problems with the code actually being used in the Doyle story; but honestly, that’s a one-line fix. With all this to-do made about the signaling, we don’t ever find out what they were signaling to each other, or why. Instead we spend a lot of time with the official detectives, about whom I care nothing, and who do a lot of the actual work.

But then again, it’s not surprising that the episode turned out heavier, darker, and more tragic than the canon story. You can now hear Brett’s labored breathing along with every line delivery. He rallies for the opening scene in 221b, which is mostly enjoyable–Watson is so pleased he gets to do the deducing, Holmes scrapbooking and pretending it’s important it pretty funny, and of course Rosalie Williams remains a treasure. He also somehow manages to haul himself in and out of that hole in the roof. But in the final scene at the opera, when they end with a closeup of Holmes weeping over the music and the tragic events that have gone before…that’s more sadness than this episode has really earned, or than the viewer can easily bear. 


	35. Third Eye Blind: THE MAZARIN STONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why does the universe hate “The Three Garridebs?”

Why does the universe hate “The Three Garridebs?”

Every serious Holmes fan, whatever their take on the Great Partnership, has a special place in their heart for “The Three Garridebs.” As a story, it has its drawbacks. The plot is recycled and the detective work elementary. But who cares about any of that? Because at the denouement, “Killer” Evans puts a bullet into Watson, and then this happens:

**‘There was a crash as Holmes’s pistol came down on the man’s head. I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons. Then my friend’s wiry arms were round me, and he was leading me to a chair. “You’re not hurt, Watson? For God’s sake, say that you are not hurt!”**

**It was worth a wound—it was worth many wounds—to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.**

**“It’s nothing, Holmes. It’s a mere scratch.” He had ripped up my trousers with his pocketknife. “You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive. Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?”’**

I don’t care whether you think Holmes and Watson are platonic besties or ace soulmates or are doing it on the regular on the hearthrug in the 221b sitting room: whatever you think the true nature of the Great Partnership is, the first time you read these three paragraphs, you realize you have been waiting for them all your life. Finally, the grand emotions of the Great Partnership attain full expression. This moment is as full of vindication, validation, astonishment, and love for the reader as it is for Watson. And for Holmes–that initial moment of panic and denial says so much both about what Watson means to him and how ill-equipped he is to cope with his own feelings. I generally don’t endorse extrajudicial murder; but we have to imagine Holmes is making that threat mainly for Watson (and for the reader): oh by the way, Watson, in case you were wondering, I can now confirm beyond a shadow of suspicion that if in fact anyone ever seriously harms you, I will FUCK HIS SHIT UP.

So one thing that all of us want with the sharpest of longings is, one day, to see a really  _good_  adaptation of “The Three Garridebs.” One where enough work had been put into developing the relationship that when they finally filmed this scene, it hit you as powerfully as it does on the page. One where you had strong actors in both roles who were not afraid to make their characters glow with all that pent-up love and long-deferred desire. Many of us thought that  _Sherlock_  was such an adaptation. Many of us were waiting to see if Moffat and Gatiss would ever bring in “Three Garridebs.” Many of us thought maybe the “I love you” moment in the S4 trailer might have had something to do with “Three Garridebs.” And in fact, in “The Final Problem,” they DO bring in “The Three Garridebs!”

Oh, Moffat and Gatiss.You MISERABLE FUCKERS.

I’m just going to go ahead and say that this has to have been on some level a deliberate fuck-you to the Johnlock contingent. Why else would you invoke this story and all it represents, only to deploy it in this utterly meaningless and entirely ridiculous way? Of all the bait-and-switches that show perpetrated–and there have been MANY–I think this must rank as one of the cruelest.

Well, Granada Holmes was not  _Sherlock_. This was a team that embraced the Great Partnership warmly and consistently and strove to center it in as many episodes as possible. This was a team that understood how to build incrementally and how to make the minutiae matter. And whether we’re talking about Brett/Burke or Brett/Hardwicke, I think we can say that here was a Holmes/Watson team uniquely prepared to squeeze ALL the glory out of the Garridebs Moment. Gary Hopkins even wrote a really pretty decent script which crosses the poorly-made “Garridebs” with the lamentably weak “Mazarin Stone” and comes out with something that’s actually better than either of the individual stories, and which really replicates pretty well the mixture of comedy and tragedy that Watson identifies as the keynote for “Three Garridebs.” They had the tools, they had the talent, and they certainly had the inclination to go for broke on “Garridebs” and leave the viewer weeping on the floor.

And then the universe said, “Nice adaptation of ‘Three Garridebs’ you have there. Be a shame if something were to HAPPEN TO IT.”

Jeremy Brett, by this point in the filming schedule, had just become too sick to work. I was tipped off about this in advance by [@educatedinyellow](https://tmblr.co/mrYgoXVZ_MzPZo7Y637Vh_g), but even without that, it would be a pretty simple deduction. Holmes appears in this episode for maybe three minutes, including voiceovers. At the beginning of the episode, he invents a mysterious case that requires him to disappear to the Scottish highlands. He tells Watson not to worry, he’ll be watching him “with my third eye.” Holmes doesn’t appear at all until the very end of the episode, and even then he’s a ghost in Mycroft’s mind. It is as if Holmes has died and is watching over the efforts of his proteges like the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Mycroft and Watson do all the detecting–each is working on his own case, until they discover that they’re actually two parts of the same case–and I have to say, it wouldn’t necessarily have to have been a terrible idea to have one episode where Sidekicks Are Doing It For Themselves and the lead gets the week off.  _Doctor Who_ started doing this in series 2, and some of these episodes (“Blink,” for instance) are extremely effective. But nobody in their right mind would have chosen “The Three Garridebs” as the vehicle for such an episode. Making “Garridebs” with no Sherlock Holmes makes about as much sense as trying to bake an apple pie without apples.

Well, in fact, nobody chose this. Everyone involved does their best. I particularly appreciate the Misses Garrideb, who are the best thing about this episode. Hopkins has taken a passing reference to the fact that Nathan Garrideb does have some female relatives and out of it created this delightful maiden-lady sister act. Detective stories have always had a special place in their hearts for old maiden ladies; they’re the original surveillance team. Hardwicke plays well against them, and overall his part of the mystery is quite charming. But nothing can compensate for the loss of Brett and Holmes, especially once Watson gets hurt. They do stage the Big Scene, and Hardwicke gives it his best, but…it’s sad. It’s just very sad, and there’s nothing there, and it makes you want to bite the universe for screwing everyone out of what could have been a dynamite show finale.

As for the Mazarin Stone plot…it’s bad. I mean it’s not as bad as the original story, in which we are asked to believe that the evil Count can’t tell the difference between a phonograph record and a live performance, or between a live human and a waxwork, at close range. But honestly, I am over it with the stolen jewels, I spotted the Secret Diamond Hiding Place long before it was mysteriously revealed to Mycroft in the mud, and when they started talking about the diamond’s backstory, I thought, I don’t want to hear this diamond’s backstory. If it’s not the actual Moonstone, then GTFO. The final sequence, in which phantom Mycrofts appear to be stalking the Count until he uses up all his bullets, is perhaps a way of bringing in the waxwork replica idea from the canon story, but it’s never explained exactly how this illusion was accomplished (mirrors? waxwork Mycrofts on wheels? Fezzik in a holocaust cloak on a wheelbarrow?). And you know, I like Charles Gray’s Mycroft…but not for an entire hour. It’s a nice theme, but it doesn’t have a whole lot of variations.

What else is there to say? They would not have made this episode the way they did if they’d had any other choice. But I do find the “third eye” thing very unsettling. It’s a very strange way of compensating for his physical deterioration. I mean I know Holmes is the greatest reasoner who ever lived; but do we actually have to give him mystical omniscience? Could we just not let him stay a human, increasingly broken as he appears to be?

Ah well. One more left.


	36. What Is The Meaning Of It?: THE CARDBOARD BOX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the very last episode aired of Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes. In a lot of ways, it was better than I was expecting. In general, I’ll be honest, ever since The Last Vampyre this rewatch has been kind of a masochistic exercise. “The Cardboard Box” is definitely not one of Granada’s better episodes. But as show finales go…well, I’m anX-Files fan, so for me the bar is not high. There are worse notes on which this show could have gone out. And after the vast disappointments of “Mazarin Stone,” it’s nice to have Brett back–even not at full capacity–so that you can say a proper goodbye.

_“It was a blazing hot day in August.”_  

–Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Cardboard Box.”

Does that look like a blazing hot day in August to you? It does not. T. R. Bowen, who brought us “Abbey Grange,” “Priory School,” “Frances Carfax,” “Hound of the Baskervilles,” and “Eligible Bachelor,” has decided in his wisdom to take what is certainly the most gruesome of the early short stories–a case which was considered too horrifying to include in the early collections–and make it a Christmas episode. It’s possible that this change was dictated to him from above; but until enlightened by the better-informed, I prefer to see it as malicious yet effective way of making a horrifying story just a little bit sicker. 

I’m going to talk about that below; and, of course, about the fact that this is the very last episode aired of Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes. In a lot of ways, it was better than I was expecting. In general, I’ll be honest, ever since  _The Last Vampyre_ this rewatch has been kind of a masochistic exercise. “The Cardboard Box” is definitely not one of Granada’s better episodes. But as show finales go…well, I’m an _X-Files_  fan, so for me the bar is not high. There are worse notes on which this show could have gone out. And after the vast disappointments of “Mazarin Stone,” it’s nice to have Brett back–even not at full capacity–so that you can say a proper goodbye.

Christmas is the time of gift-giving. Parcels wrapped in brown paper are everywhere in this episode. If you know the original story–or even if you don’t, and have drawn some inferences based on the title–every time you see one of these parcels, you want to yell out at the screen, “NO! DON’T OPEN IT!” Whereas the Granada “Blue Carbuncle” stands out for its effectiveness in filling our hearts with the spirit of the season as Doyle intended, Bowen’s screenplay relies for its impact on the constant friction between the Christmas setting and the content of the actual case. This friction is at its most burningly painful in the scenes of Sarah Cushing’s Christmas party, during which The Cardboard Box is sitting under the tree amongst all the other presents, while her dog Gladstone sniffs at it–until she opens it in the presence of all her guests.

Thus transformed, “The Cardboard Box” acquires a kind of twisted irony that seems very modern to me, and very different from the canon story. Rereading “Cardboard Box,” I was surprised at how much I liked it. I thought maybe this was one of those adult-perspective-changes-things moments; but then I recalled that I must have liked it before, too, because “[Absurdly Simple](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Farchiveofourown.org%2Fworks%2F742602&t=MTgyZGIwMTk5ODUxODczMDNiODM0YWFkYzdiNzZkNTIwMGMzNjJlOSxkMGtZT3VZSw%3D%3D&b=t%3AoLe-_8xUds1HV0x3kEwd_w&p=http%3A%2F%2Fplaidadder.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F163731508724%2Fwhat-is-the-meaning-of-it-granada-holmes&m=1)” closes with a speech very reminiscent of Holmes’s final ruminations on this case: 

**“What is the meaning of it, Watson?” said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. “What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”**

Holmes occasionally has these philosophical digressions; but I have a special fondness for this one, because it shows him honestly bewildered–in a way that I frequently find myself bewildered–by the stupid persistence of “misery and violence and fear.” I watch the torrent of filth spewing out of the current president’s administration, and on one level I get it–playing to the base, etc.–and I can tell you all about the historical and economic and cultural factors that created that ‘base’, but on the most basic level, I just keep asking myself WHY. WHY do people want a world like this? I’m sure you are all answering that question in your heads right now, each according to your personal ideological matrix–but I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about what Holmes calls the “standing perennial problem” of constant and apparently meaningless human suffering. “What object is served?” There are material objects you can name, of course; but the question cuts deeper than that. Roylott, for instance, in “Speckled Band” has a concrete object: he wants to hang onto his stepdaughters’ income. All right. What makes their income worth more to him than their lives? I DON’T KNOW. 

Of course, Holmes isn’t talking about a case where the murderer had what is considered a material motive. Perhaps the reason this case unsettles him so much is that the motive seems nonsensical to him. Holmes, a connoisseur of the weird and the outre, stands baffled before one of the most common kinds of murder there is: a man killing a woman because she refuses to belong to him. It seems to Holmes, perhaps, as a crime which is peculiarly without an “object.” Jim Browder, miserable enough before the murders, is now suicidal and eager to end a nightmarish existence. His wife is no more within his grasp now than she was before. The one thing Browder *has* ‘accomplished’ by killing Mary (and, incidentally, her lover) is hurting Sarah Cushing–and he even fucked up that part by sending the package to the wrong sister. Does having stuck it to Sarah Cushing really compensate Browder for what his murders destroyed? It appears not. So no human object was served. As for the divine or providential object for which Holmes is searching…it’s bad enough if the world is “ruled by chance,” but WTF is ruling the world if whatever it is WANTS THIS?

Bowen’s screenplay keeps the final speech, but I don’t think Bowen really grappled with its meaning. Instead, “The Cardboard Box” serves up its postmodern blend of Christmas cheer spiked with disgust and horror. Instead of the famous mind-reading passage, we get a nice cozy scene in 221b in which Holmes and Watson are discussing body-snatching and just how much the medical establishment is complicit in it. That really sets the tone for the whole episode: a kind of “Awww….eww?” Holmes’s own attitude toward Christmas seems to have soured quite a bit since “Blue Carbuncle;” he’s quite Scroogey when it comes to Christmas traditions in this one, whereas in “Blue Carbuncle” he’s generally indifferent to them when not enjoying them. Still, some sort of warmth occasionally burbles up through his curmudgeonliness, and it’s cheering to see his genuine delight at Watson wearing his present:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt2FlHHpt)

Still the peacock of this firm, even if the plumage is more subdued…and then this weird moment when Holmes, after objecting to the mini-Christmas tree, decides to decorate his lab equipment:

[Originally posted by granada-brett-crumbs](https://tmblr.co/ZgvRKh2GGhWTO)

I thought I was noticing this in some of the earlier “Memoirs” episodes, but I think I can definitely detect it now: Brett seems much more at ease, and less obviously sick, in the 221b scenes than at any other time. There must have been something comforting to him about being on the old set that he’d been navigating since 1984, surrounded by actors he had known and trusted for years; and it was probably much less physically taxing for him than shooting outdoors. So the 221b scenes still have some of the life and the naturalism of Brett’s early performance; and that’s enormously comforting, especially after two episodes (”Pince-Nez” and “Mazarin Stone”) in which Hardwicke and Brett have virtually no scenes together. 

As for the rest of the episode, well, the only thing I feel moved to talk about is Bowen’s reading of the murders as a “crime of passion.” Holmes, as we know, likes to let murderers who kill out of love go. What Bowen seems to have misunderstood is that Crocker, Sterndale, et al. were murdering men who threatened the women they loved. Browder murders his wife. To have Holmes standing there wishing aloud that they were in France so that Browder would be off the hook is, IMHO, wrong–both in the sense of “bad” and in the sense of “out of character.” One of the reasons this case upsets Holmes so much is that it contradicts some of his assumptions about what “love” is and why men kill for it. It’s still a mystery to him how a man can say he loves a woman and also say that’s why he killed her.

And then there’s Bowen’s sexualization of Sarah Cushing, which goes beyond what’s in the original story and which is used to transfer the responsibility for Mary’s death from her actual killer to the woman who somehow made him do it. In the canon story, after all, we only have Browder’s word for it that Sarah was responsible for turning Mary against him. Even if that’s how Browder sees it, that’s no guarantee that it’s true; and in any case, by blaming Sarah for the breakup of their marriage, Browder is not only shifting the blame away from himself but denying Mary’s agency–which is just a preview of the way Browder violently cancels Mary’s agency forever by killing her. His own description of the murders, while it tries to create the impression that it happened in an uncontrollable and consciousness-threatening burst of rage, also shows that he was absolutely not acting on impulse; he spends a LONG time following them, has to make several active decisions to *keep* following them, and has plenty of time to think better of it and go home. The fact that he appears to have regretted the murders immediately doesn’t mean he didn’t consciously intend them. Browder himself thinks he should hang, and the canon story agrees. Bowen, on the other hand, seems to think that his killing of Mary was in some way excusable, and scripts a final encounter in the jail cell with the ghost of Mary which I found extremely squirmy, which appears to have been intended as an opportunity for Browder to show us how much he ‘really loves’ her. 

Anyway. My point is that ending with that scene on the ice, and Holmes’s final speech, is a fitting conclusion for the series in many ways. It gives Brett the last words, which is only right. It speaks to Brett’s own suffering, which the show has become unable to conceal from the viewer, and our anger with a world in which one person can get through life healthy and happy and another has to struggle every day, a world full of arbitrary distinctions made according to no reason any of us can understand. And it gives us a final moment with the Great Partnership, together again and for always, balanced there on the thin ice separating right and reason from the abyss below. Goodbye, Granada Holmes. I’ll miss you.


	37. ADDENDUM: THE FULL LENGTH FILMS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In addition to the hour-long episodes, the Granada team made five feature-length films: _The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Sign of Four, The Master Blackmailer_ ("Charles Augustus Milverton"), _The Last Vampyre_ ("The Sussex Vampire"), and _The Eligible Bachelor_ ("Noble Bachelor" meets "Veiled Lodger"). These are, let's say, uneven. I will include links to all five film reviews, with snippets, in this chapter.

[Hidden Fires Indeed: _The Hound of the Baskervilles_](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/161861142314/hidden-fires-indeed-granada-holmes-the-hound-of)

They waited too long.

That’s basically the TL:DR on this one. The Granada team waited too long to do  _The Hound of the Baskervilles._ This is the best Holmes novel Doyle ever wrote, containing some wonderful writing for both Holmes and Watson, and it comes with enough atmosphere to fill out a whole fleet of horror movies. If they had scheduled this one for, say, the winter of 1985, between the first and second series of the  _Adventures_ , or even for the hiatus between the  _Adventures_  and the  _Return_ –which is where it fell in the original order anyway–this would have been one of the great ones. Think about it. How much would you give to be able to watch “Blue Carbuncle”-era Brett and Burke do  _Baskervilles_? I would give a LOT. Watson’s part in this one is tailor-made for Burke’s energy, the scene where Watson finds out Holmes has been hiding out on the moors without telling him would have been ON FIRE, and to see Brett charging around the countryside with the same elan with which he leaps over that couch in “The Red Headed League” would have brought joy to my dispirited heart.

Well, no one could have known at the beginning that treating Brett’s bipolar disorder would one day take such a huge toll on his body, or that the fluid retention caused by the medication would aggravate what would turn out to be a fatal heart condition. But all of these things did happen. And so by the time they did make  _Baskervilles_ , it was too late. 

A Fine Romance:  _[The Sign of Four](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/161719275769/a-fine-romance-granada-holmes-the-sign-of-four)_

I fully applaud the decision to eliminate Watson’s marriage. If Doyle had known, when he wrote  _The Sign of Four,_ how long he was going to be writing Sherlock Holmes stories, he would never have married Watson off. Doyle had zero interest in Watson’s marriage from a character development point of view; in ACD canon after _Sign_ , it is never anything more than a logistical problem. Mary Morstan plays virtually no role in any of the other stories. What Doyle seems to have really wanted is what most fans have always wanted: the two of them together in their bachelor pad in Baker Street, unencumbered by other human relationships (in canon, Mycroft is the only family member we ever meet, and he only shows up twice). So I have no problem with Hawkesworth’s decision to suppress the marriage. What I think was a mistake was to suppress the marriage  _and also_ adapt _Sign of Four._ Watson and Mary _’s_  romance is very important to that novel; and when you take it out, a lot of what’s left behind is unappetizing. If you’re going to gut the romance, then you better come up with something to add that’s better. And unfortunately, Hawkesworth really doesn’t–although he does do something  _very_  intriguing with the last few minutes, which I will discuss below.

[Bury This Case: _The Master Blackmaile_ r](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/162825155269/bury-this-case-granada-holmes-rewatch-the)

I’m going to try to articulate my response to this strangely compelling failure. I can’t promise answers in advance, though.

[The World Is Not Yet Prepared: _The Last Vampyre_](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/162910299929/the-world-is-not-yet-prepared-granada-holmes)

There’s only one interesting question raised for me by “The Last Vampyre,” which is: How did this show get  _this_  bad this fast? I mean, I had problems with [ _The Master Blackmailer_](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/162814727034/bury-this-case-granada-holmes-rewatch-the); but next to this one it looks like  _Citizen Kane_. What was Jeremy Paul thinking? What was director Tim Sullivan smoking? What hijinks were going on in the editing room? Who was in charge of wrangling that bat? How, in the very decade in which vampires were making their pop-culture comeback–the decade that brought us  _Interview with the Vampire, The X-Files,_  and  _Buffy,_   _The Vampire Slayer–_ could they have done such a terrible job of extracting a couple of hours of television from “The Sussex Vampire”? 

[The Terrors of the Mind: _The Eligible Bachelor_](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/163106815869/the-terrors-of-the-mind-granada-holmes)

I want to talk about what I think is the fundamental problem with  _Eligible Bachelor_ , which is its failure to honestly and courageously grapple with the topic it chose, viz., mental illness. Though I don’t know anything about how this script was written or how this episode got made–others will, I’m sure, enlighten in the comments–it seems to me that what’s happened here is that the skeleton of “The Noble Bachelor” has been made the foundation of an almost completely unrelated story about Holmes’s fear that his own mind is unraveling under the pressures of his work–especially the many, many cases he’s taken up over the years which are dedicated to protecting women from male violence. Again, it seems to me as a viewer that this episode can’t possibly  _not_  have been, on some probably unconscious level, about the production team processing their feelings about Brett’s own mental illness. What’s frustrating is that this could have been quite a compelling story; and every once in a while, as I said, some of its potential will be realized for a few fleeting moments. But it seems to me as if everyone behind the scenes who was involved in  _The Eligible Bachelor_  was afraid to do what it would have taken to tell that story well.


	38. Postscript: ROMANCING THE TEXT: JEREMY BRETT, PAPER, AND SHERLOCK HOLMES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was always my intention, after finishing the rewatch, to write up a post about why Jeremy Brett was the definitive 20th century Sherlock Holmes. But every time I start such a post, I think, oh what’s the point, it’s all already been said, by myself even, and anyway there’s too much. I’ve formulated a hypothesis, though, which is that if I can explain why Brett’s interaction with paper is so important to my enjoyment of this show, I will probably in the process be demonstrating what it was that made his Sherlock Holmes so unique and indelible. So follow me, friends, while I unfold my crackpot theories about the romance of the material text and how it binds us to the Master Paper-Handler.

  


It’s late, this week is still terrible, and I’ve got some time to consider a question that has been much on my mind of late: why is it that I love watching Jeremy Brett handle paper? I’m taking it up now partly because it was always my intention, after finishing the rewatch, to write up a post about why Jeremy Brett was the definitive 20th century Sherlock Holmes. But every time I start such a post, I think, oh what’s the point, it’s all already been said, by myself even, and anyway there’s too much. I’ve formulated a hypothesis, though, which is that if I can explain why Brett’s interaction with paper is so important to my enjoyment of this show, I will probably in the process be demonstrating what it was that made his Sherlock Holmes so unique and indelible. So follow me, friends, while I unfold my crackpot theories about the romance of the material text and how it binds us to the Master Paper-Handler.

**1\. haptic**

Let me introduce those of you yet unfamiliar with it to a vital but neglected word. Here’s the definition given in Merriam-Webster Online:

_**“Definition**  of  **haptic**. 1 : relating to or based on the sense of touch. 2 : characterized by a predilection for the sense of touch: a  **haptic**  person.” _

Mrs. Plaidder is signed up to one of those word-of-the-day alerts from some online dictionary, and the day they dished this one up she seized it and embraced it to her bosom as if it were a long-lost child. Until she discovered this word, she was unable to articulate it; but she is in fact a haptic person, with a predilection for the sense of touch. Haptic people get joy out of touching things–especially, it seems, things made by the hands of other people. I mean we have pottery in the house that we bought mainly because Mrs. Plaidder likes to hold it. This probably also explains why we took about eight semesters of Introduction to Wheel Throwing at the local art center in the last city we lived in. But I digress.

But no, I don’t actually, because my point is that Brett’s Holmes is haptic, and that’s one of the main things that makes his performance compelling. This is one of the things Brett pulled out of the stories that earlier interpreters had failed to bring to life. Watson always seems to be paying attention to Holmes’s hands, which are active and eloquent and sensitive and, at moments of great intensity, not infrequently fastened suddenly to some part of Watson’s person. Haptic people make good violinists. Brett does not spend a lot of time holding a violin–I’m assuming he didn’t play or wasn’t comfortable with it for some reason–so he brings it through at every possible other opportunity. I mean even when he’s diving for that stolen document in “Second Stain,” watch the hands:

[Originally posted by granadabrettishholmes](https://tmblr.co/ZkoGSs1gJRuDd)

Dude has not even stopped his forward motion before the hands are slithering across the parquet searching for data. This is something that was really revolutionary about Brett’s interpretation of the character. His Holmes is not just a brain in a vat; he detects with his whole body, leading with the hands. 

One of the things that makes Holmes exceptional, in canon and in Granada, is that he has successfully resisted the deadening process that separates so many of us from our sensory capabilities as we are socialized to deny all that input so that we may tolerate the sensory deprivations of the modern workplace for longer. To most of us a floor is a thing you stand on. That’s not what it is to Sherlock Holmes. That floor is talking to him. 

We respond to that aspect of Brett’s performance so strongly because it speaks to something fundamental about how humans learn–something that the twenty-first century often seems to be in danger of forgetting. Some research has now been done comparing the experience of reading ebooks to paper books, and early results seem to indicate that we retain the material better when reading a physical book because of the sensory and spatial “mapping” that holding and manipulating the physical book allows us to do. We know something better when we can grapple with it somatically as well as mentally. 

At any rate, when you stop to think about it, conversing in this way with material objects is about 80% of what Sherlock Holmes does for a living; and Brett really  _embodied_  that conversation. And this brings me to:

**2\. the disappearing text**

Why paper specifically? Well, first of all, there’s a lot of it about. Holmes lives in a world where an information revolution is indeed taking place, but the only way people still really have of  _storing_  all this information is committing it to paper. Up to the late nineteenth century, writing has largely been a very concrete and material process in which a unique human body wrestles with a collection of unique objects. The intimacy thus enforced between writer and text is something exploited again and again by Holmes, who realizes how many traces the material text retains of the person who composed it. But in the 1890s, that intimacy is already under threat. New technologies have developed for transferring information to paper. The typewriter is coming into vogue (see “A Case of Identity”), and the telegraph has for the first time allowed for text composed in one location to appear almost instantaneously a different location. 

The Holmes stories stay up to date with all of this; but at the same time, they pulse with an already-nostalgic love for the handwritten document. These documents conceal mysteries and have to be decoded, even when they are not (as in “Dancing Men,” for instance) actually written in code. From the King of Bohemia’s stationery to the desperate note scrawled by “D” in “Wisteria Lodge,” paper in the Holmes stories is a landscape of mystery and intrigue whose secrets always yield themselves up to Holmes eventually.

The dematerialization of the text in the digital age is something we will all eventually take for granted; but it is a big deal, and I believe that some part of us mourns the loss of the tactile. To think, as late as the early 1990s, I was regularly writing letters, of some length, to friends in faraway places. Somewhere under my bed right now are boxes of letters written to me by my family, by my friends, and by Mrs. Plaidder, during times when we were physically separated. A handwritten letter conveys the writer to you in ways that electronic communication does not. So when I see some fool having a roll in the hay with a letter, [like the fool in the last GIF on this thread](http://sanguinarysanguinity.tumblr.com/post/163831502773/jeremy-brett-handling-paper) (thank you, [@sanguinarysanguinity](https://tmblr.co/mg1E8aKAfQ3EWg4ngP-Gonw)), I sort of get it. A letter is a far more satisfying proxy for the beloved than electronic communication. You can  _sense_ the person who wrote it–even if you’re not Sherlock Holmes–in the handwriting, in the smell and weight of the paper, the color of the ink. Whereas with electronic communication–which I am not knocking at all, look at what I am doing with my Saturday night right now–you are restricted to letters, images, and sometimes a little tinny version of what they sound like. And while you can in fact hug a smartphone–PJ does, when one of us is away and calls in to say goodnight to her–it’s still not the same. You can hug a letter; you can kiss a letter; you can press it to your heart; you can hold it while you fall asleep; you can smell it; you can drop your big tears of loneliness onto it and it will absorb them. So friendly and so forgiving is paper.

As the text dematerializes, it becomes less redolent of the person who created it. Now, having been an early adopter of email I can tell you that long before the Emoji Movie, people were doing their best to encode some of those clues into the new technology. (In MY DAY, we had to TYPE our emojis using ORDINARY KEYBOARD CHARACTERS!) And I’m not saying electronic communication can’t be intense. I know people who fell in love via email, sight unseen, for real. I’m just saying that it’s not as tactile–or olfactory, or, for a guy who likes to taste his evidence, culinary.

[Originally posted by tearose77](https://tmblr.co/Zzm9AxjX3yjw)

So my crackpot theory is that paper, for the digital age viewer, is a powerful symbol of what we fear we might be losing during the virtualization of our universe–and much of that involves our own sensory experience. Brett’s Holmes, as the Paper Whisperer, promises to restore to us a fuller engagement with the world of objects and a closer intimacy with what we read. Like Holmes’s decoding work in “The Dancing Men,” or his attempts to reconstruct an entire document from one surviving fragment (“Reigate Squires,” “Three Gables”), or his search for the meaning of a neglected document (“Musgrave Ritual”), Brett’s apparent affinity with paper promises to restore lost meaning to a place and time that no longer even knows how to look for it. 

**3\. taking care of business**

And now, let me extol the virtues of paper as a stage prop. Compared to other things that Holmes handles in the Granada series–test tubes, magnifying glasses, syringes, fireplace pokers, revolvers–paper has the virtue of extending and amplifying the actor’s gestures. The arc a sheet of newsprint describes as it travels through the air is bigger than the arc the hand holding it would describe alone. Paper, because it’s flexible and strong but delicate, quivers and dances and flutters like an extension of Holmes’s own body and spirit. Through paper, Brett’s Holmes expands to fill the space around him, becoming an elemental force, whipping up a tornado and then making it rain. This is something Brett had obviously learned before playing Holmes; but never was this put to use more effectively than in the Granada Series. 

And then of course, paper so often serves as an intermediary between Holmes and Watson–as a kind of indirect caress. You could base an entire drinking game around the number of times that one of them will pick up a document, read it, and then hand it to the other one to get his opinion. At times this move becomes, IMHO, unambiguously flirtatious:

[Originally posted by halloawhatisthis](https://tmblr.co/Zt4Czt2HuHPZY)

Sorry, that’s more in the “unambiguously goofy” range…how about this one:

[Originally posted by granada-brett-crumbs](https://tmblr.co/ZgvRKh2IahL_e)

Anyway. So this is just one example of something detailed, sustained, and nuanced about Brett’s performance in this role that seems like a kind of amusing quirk but turns out to be far more emotionally significant than you might realize. The bottom line is that Brett was just a better actor than most of the men who had attempted the role before him. There are thousands of great actors in England, and comparatively few of them really make it. Brett spent some time toiling in the cultural salt mines, in both England and the US, but he was always better than the work he was given to do. In Holmes he finally had a part to which he could give everything he had. 

That in itself was partly due to Brett’s extraordinary fidelity to the original text. Brett talked a lot about how he had to fight the rest of the team to keep the show in line with ACD canon. The viewer could be forgiven for being puzzled by that; nearly all the Granada episodes deviate to some extent, and some of them are startlingly divergent. I’ve come to the conclusion that when Brett talked about being faithful to the canon, he was talking first and foremost about being faithful to the dialogue. In the adaptation, at least through the end of the “Return” series, Holmes’s dialogue is usually preserved as close to verbatim as possible. The producers evidently thought he wouldn’t be able to make all that Victorian diction live. But he did it. He inhabited those speeches and transformed them, with all the care and dedication other actors lavish on Shakespeare. In that sense, his whole performance derives from paper–from the book of Doyle’s stories that he read, and  _paid attention to_ , before starting work on the “Adventures.” Granada Holmes was different because it went back to the text, instead of to the earlier adaptations, for its source–and because Brett rediscovered there a protagonist who threw himself into his work body and soul, just the way Brett did.


End file.
